Finally got The Pad looking sort of pretty much close enough to the way I want it to look. Bitch of a thing working with tables because we can't disable the banners in frames but I persisted with the bastard of a thing for 6 hours and now it's done til I update it again, which hopefully won't be too far away.

All the Bravenet services buggered off when Batcave moved their product away from 0catch and lo and behold, my account there was shut down. So much the better because some other bushpig had got chatrat as their account name and I'm buggered if I can remember what my account name was. We're talking 18 months plus since I logged in there y'know. Hadn't updated The Pad for nigh on 12 months. Sheesh.

Come to think of it, I haven't put out a Swamp for ages either. My poor neglected subscribers. How will they ever know what's going on in my life if I don't keep them all up to date?

At least they can be sure of one thing: My life is bound to be more interesting than their lives.
Heee.

Scrabbling around the people who have blogs on Livejournal.com, some of the things I've seen have been highly amusing. Apart from bumping into people I know and letting them know I've been there, some of the names of their blogs and their usernames are really very entertaining. I'm having a bit of difficulty making up my mind whether or not these people are interesting, idiotic, terminally dull or perhaps just like me. Some of them seem thoughtful, but looking at the subject matter of their blogs - oh my golly gee-whiz. Dull. One thing made me a bit depressed was seeing how many blogs had "boi" in the title.

Just says to me they've all done something they're going to disown in a fat hurry. I didn't look at any of them so I could be totally wrong about that, but on the other hand, I bet I'm not. Silly people.

In case you're wondering, if you just click on the search facility for any interest out of 89 zillion interests, it seems the same blogs come up in the returns. The better blogs, I've found are the ones which have been updated in the last hour. They're the ones I've been leaving my mark on.

It's a shame this blog didn't allow me to put a jiggy boo on it so anyone reading it can leave their own comments. It does now though. I would have kinda liked to respond to people's comments instead of pretending to be the editor of my own newspaper where nobody has the right of reply. For some reason, email tends to frighten people. Probably because the recipient can see who sent the email and they'd rather not be seen.

Pssst... it's the internet, nobody can see you. Clicking delete solves all your problems.

And because I've been diligent and made wholesale changes to this thing - you might have noticed - there's now a little jiggery pokery down the bottom of each entry where you can pour your little hearts out and I then stomp all over your downtroddenness and insignificance for being a pest. Not really. But the thought had (and does) occur to me. :)

I didn't miss Saturday, by the way. To me, this is still Saturday night. So that means you can come back tomorrow and there'll be something new to read. Won't that be fun for you!

I started another blog at LiveJournal.com because I dislike leaving messages on others' blogs without there being any way for them to find out who the hell I am - and LJ is where I've been leaving footprints.

It's not really a blog as such, just a membership there which says a bit more about me and what I'm about. I'm still intending for this to be "the blog", the one I'm going to update more regularly than before for reasons already stated. The other reason is in LJ, I'm Mr ChatRat not just me.

Some silly troll got ChatRat in January, made one pathetic entry then turned her back on her blog. Yes, I said her blog. What a waste of MY nick. What a disgrace. If she'd done something spectacular with it, I wouldn't mind so much. But she's just left it there doing bloody nothing.

I'm more than just mildly irritated by that. I have half a mind to email her and tell her cancel her account so someone with a bit of enthusiasm and personal pride can take over the name.

Grumble mumble...

People have been going through Mr Festy's blog and they're still leaving comments - like he's ever going to be able to read them or respond to them. Found a great link through the comments though - dokich.blogspot.com - what a bunch of champions. I loved it. But then I would, they're doing offline what I've been doing online for years. Good on 'em. Take it from me, it's personally very taxing and heartbreaking stuff. I mean, you want to stab these f*ckers in the face with a pitchfork but you can't. You want to rescue every face you see but you can't. It gets you down and it's exhausting trying to get hosts to shut down sites or log ip addies for the authorities. They just don't want to acknowledge they have this sort of activity on their servers. Ignorant toads.

Oh well. I'll always have chocolate.

Two in one day, wow.

Why?

Obviously because I have something on my mind and I want to get it on paper - as it were.
Moreover, I want to hear from like minded individuals who have an opinion on what I'm about to say, one way or another.

I'm thinking about the untapped power of the mind.

I could have put this elsewhere where I know it will be seen, but if people read my blog, it's because they've come to me to see what it is I have to say. If I put this up where people hang out, this becomes nothing more than a grandstanding advertisement. If you're reading this here, you have taken some sort of initiative to see what's here. You have an open mind - whether you believe that right now or not.

The power of the mind, you see.

What else can be achieved with this power? What improbable events can be brought to life with the power of the mind?

I don't accept I'm alone with the things I can do with my mind. It is beyond my ability to accept that others can't do the things I can do. I'm talking about reading other people and being able to predict with a degree of accuracy what those people will do in any given circumstance. We've all seen it, we've all done it. "Build it and they will come" say the pundits. Why? Because they know themselves and they know we are not that different from each other. They would go so they know others will as well.

What if we could refine that, what if we know who is on the other end of the telephone before we pick it up? What if we know certain keywords will produce an automatic response in others - even if they themselves are not aware of it. This is the power I'm talking about. It's wielded with the choice of words, the tone of voice, a movement, a gesture, a look. Subliminal suggestion. We are manipulated by masters every time we set foot outside our homes or turn on the television.

Who knows the secrets and has these skills? What do they do with this power they have over us - or think they have over us? More importantly still, that we think they have over us. For the most part, they sell their products or persuade us to buy their services. It's a power and power translates to money and money translates back to power.

What money can't buy is time. What those with power never have enough of is time. What those with no power have is one long wait. A wait until the next pay day, a wait until they can afford to buy the next luxury item, a wait to die. What those with no power have is what those with the most power want so much. Time.

Time is money to people with power.

I'm going to pause here for a moment to let all this sink in. At this point, my words are either being accepted or rejected. If they're being accepted, it's time to wait for the reinforcement. If my words are being rejected, it's time to compare my words with the words of that filth who brought me back to blogging, whose blog was supposed to be his honest reflections, but which was in fact, nothing but a tissue of half truths and wishful thinking.

Why? What was the purpose of his writing? His writing was to project an image of himself as someone with justification. He lied by omission. What he didn't tell his audience was that he had raped 2 more children (at least) since January. What he said was that he had got even twice more and hadn't been caught. Got even with whom? Those who are employed to protect the community from people like him? If he had to get even with them, there was only one way to do that and that was to prove they were wrong. What he did was prove they were right. He gave them more justification than they could possibly have wished for. More justification than anyone could possibly want. What mentally stable individual would want the rape of children as a weapon against authority or society?

The one purpose of his writing was warped from a useful and insightful diary of thoughts and events into a tool of manipulation and dissimulation. It was a weapon against truth.

Mr Freakazoid was a pedophile. Not quite human. A pedophile is what a pedophile does - they either have or want to have sex with children and they use those very same tools of manipulation against children to get sex out of them as marketing gurus use to get money out of us. It's exactly the same power. The right words in the right tone of voice, the right movement, the right gesture, the right look. When the mood setting fails and the facade of nice intentions is broken down, the villain resorts to violence. It all comes down to power.

Why am I here writing these words now?

Is it my intention to deceive? Is it my intention to manipulate, to draw from anyone reading this something I have no right to draw? What do I have to gain?

What did the freakazoid have to gain? He needed justification. He got it in measure from those he deceived with his words in his blog. What do I need? Justification? For what? I sure as hell know I haven't raped or murdered anyone and if I had, what would prompt me to suddenly change from my usual style of writing to what I have been writing for three days running now? If I had done something for which I should have reason to fear capture, I already had the perfect cover - in fact so perfect because I hadn't been here for 4 months prior to reading that bastard's blog, why draw attention to myself now? So let's rule out deception as a reason for my writing. As for justification, I don't need any. I lost my job two weeks ago and that's about the only thing of any note that has happened to me in this second half of the year.

What other motive could I have for writing? To make it easy on you, I have something to say. I have something I need to say and it's to do with the power of the mind.

I need to empower people. I need to share what knowledge I have because by sharing it my growth is assured. I'm like a messenger whose message is useless until it has been passed on so I'm passing it on.

But why here?

Again, because what I have to say needs to be delivered properly or the message is lost. My message needs to be taken by readers voluntarily for it to have been successful. To impose it on others is completely contradictory to the nature of the message itself.

I need to empower people.

I have explained why. By sharing what I know, that power increases. But I also know that power must be gained from within. Like expecting a hamster to drag a tractor up a hill, I know and understand that to impose this message on anyone and expect it to have the same effect is the same as expecting that hamster to drag that tractor up that hill. The power I need to impart is the power within the people who are reading this message. It must be released from within, not imposed from without to have effect.

And what power is that?

The power of the mind.

And what power is that?

To answer that question, correction, to help you find your own answer to that question, examine the nature of the mind. What does it do? What is its function?

It knows what's around us. It sees what you see, it hears what you hear, feels what you feel, smells and tastes what you smell and taste - and it does all that without you even making an effort to direct it to do so. What happens if you make an effort?

You begin to think. You begin to unlock the power of your mind. To think is to take the first step towards understanding and finally knowing. I know how to add and subtract and that gives me the power to buy and sell. What do those with extraordinary power and money do? They buy more and sell more.

Are you getting the picture? Or am I just full of shit.

That, my friends, is for you to decide.

I've spelled out my message. I've done what I came here to do tonight. If you've read this far then I'm guessing it's because I've put into words what you perhaps had neglected to put into words for yourself but this was a message you needed or wanted to hear. More questions?

Why do I need for you to have the power that I have?

Because power brings with it certain advantages. It brings security and security brings safety. If everyone knew what I know, we wouldn't have need of armies or weapons - that's the sort of security I'm talking about which is why I need to pass this message on. While people seek power from external sources, we will always have need of protection - ie weapons. What those who seek power from external sources fail to realise is the power they thus gain is merely relative and therefore illusory and very very fleeting. It only lasts as long their physical power is stronger than that of their perceived enemy's and while they have that power, others will work to build a stronger force.

Humbug. Real power comes from within and that means it comes from the mind. Because this power comes from within, no amount of external input can increase it. In fact, any good buddhist will tell you the more material wealth you have, the less happy you are likely to be. Whilst that's a nice thought, being realistic, it doesn't necessarily equate with human nature. I'm not in favour of ditching material wealth if it turns out doing so deprives a person of the means of achieving predetermined goals they've set for themself. I could not share this message without my pc.

I digress.

I need people to find the same power I have found because of the nature of the power of the mind. More can be achieved by like minded people acting in concert with one another than can be achieved by individuals acting alone and against one another. Want one potent example?

Live 8.

The purpose of Live 8 is to empower people in Africa, to give them freedom from hunger and disease and oppression. To help those people to help themselves. That's what Live 8 is all about. My motivation is not to help the people of Africa help themselves, but to have some middle class nobody in western society become a somebody in their own minds. If a nobody becomes a somebody because they've begun to unlock the power of their own minds, then my message will have done its job.

Press Ctrl+D to bookmark this page. You may want to return to it later. You Apple type people, you do whatever it is you do to bookmark pages.

As ever, feel free to email me. Sod the link, it's chatrat@graffiti.net . Your browsers can take care of their own html.

More to follow elsewhere.

More fun with blogs, though not specifically mine.

I've been cruising blogland for the last hour and a half or so and poking my nose into a few beauts and new ones and odd ones and doing my level best to avert my eyes from those with cutesy pie names since I don't want my keyboard covered with vomit.

Anyway, I've been leaving comments on some of them including one I found by the purest stroke of chance in the entire universe, the blog belonging to a beautiful woman who lives in Melbourne whom I've actually met outside of cyberspace.

Chocolate for Laura next time we're in the same room. She's one of the warmest, nicest and well, just really easy people to be around and I don't wrap many people that highly.

I feel sorry for the poor others on whose blogs I've left comments. Who the hell is ChatRat?

But I do these things. There are umpteen billion people in cyberspace and wherever you go, you are going to bump into someone you haven't met before - it's inevitable. If you're afraid of that, if you're only online to keep in touch with people you know, you're wasting your money. Get out there and meet as many people as you can.

I've had phone conversations with some ferkin fantastic people and met heaps of local netdwellers, none of which would have happened if I had kept myself to myself. My dad used the online dating services before he met his current squeeze. The possibilities are out there.

Not too much more gush, I know it's repellent.

I'm just doing my netizen duty getting out there and meeting fellow netizens and letting them know I've left my footprint.

Maybe others will pop in here, leave their footprints and efface the memory of the Coeur d'Alene blog bastard which got me re-blogging in the first place. Which reminds me, I really must get on and do something constructive with the Pad. I just have this feeling it could be a catalyst of sorts for something really fulcruminous.

In the meantime, if you're looking for some where to park your mouseclick, try The Promethean's Clubhouse.

I think it's possible to leave comments here if, in the course of trying to find out who the hell has been leaving these comments all over other people's blogs - if it's not, you can always email me. I love getting email from people I've amused or annoyed.

Chances are you found this place after googling my nick, keep looking and you should get my email addies or just click the email me links - that's why they're links.

In the meantime, have a look at my gift to the planet. I did it thinking of a friend of mine in Queensland, but the rest of the planet may as well share it. It's a Flash file that takes about 10 minutes to load if you're using dial up. Broadband apparently takes about 60 seconds.

It might not be that great, but it comes from the heart.

Then piss off and do something constructive.

It still bugs me that a freak like the one I mentioned yesterday could get so many people answering his blog and that its name is all over the search engines more than my nick. Oh vanity, you insatiable beast.

It still bugs me that someone like commands as much attention as he does when all he deserves is the death penalty. Society needs to rid itself of units like this one.

It made me wonder how a blog might go - or a website - that put up faces of children from child porn sites, so that anyone spotting the child might call the police, the police interview the child who could then lead police to maggots like that one. I am reminded of the pure hell one kid went through whose schoolmates - and I use the term 'mates' extremely lightly here - found his pictures on the internet and gave him so much grief he had to move interstate and change his name, only to get more taunts from more kids at his new school.

What the hell is up with that? This kid is a victim of a pedophile and his peers attack him. Only in America? I suppose we'll just have to wait and see what happens to Shasta Groene and whether or not she gets the same sort of mistreatment at the hands of her school friends.

I cling tenuously to the hope that little girls might behave more compassionately, but I know from my own school days that girls can be and often are worse than boys. Boys concentrate on the physicality of this sort of thing, girls attack personality and character and stigmas are a whole new prospect in the world of the female from what they are in the male world.

Oh how we loathe a victim.

I'm getting a tad angry here. From the first Flash file I put up on my ISP provided homepage which brings a lump to my throat, I'm torn between loving the innocent and stabbing ignorant cowards in their eyes with cornforks because their eyes are useless to them if they can't see how the hurt they cause with their ignorance demeans everyone around them, turns beauty into fear and undermines the very foundations we all need not only to overcome adversity, but perhaps even to prevent violations from occuring in the first place.

It's way overdue that we - and I mean every last man, woman and child - make a conscious effort to protect and heal instead of attack and further hurt those who are victims or who may become victims.

The contagion a victim carries is imaginary. It can't jump from one person to another just by close proximity. The stigma, however, is the same stigma given life by prejudices based on race, religion or whatever else. Eww, you're a victim. Yuck. Get away from me.

Say "No!" and say it loudly.

"Oh my, you've been a victim. I can make you feel better if you'll trust me enough. I'm not a counsellor, not a doctor, not a police officer, not a priest/imam/rabbi/minister - or maybe I am - but whatever else I may be, in this time I will be your friend if you let me."

How magnificent would that be.

If we all - and I mean every one of us - adopted that sort of attitude, a website such as the one I described, would empower decent people to become like the heroic staff at Denny's who called the police and saved the life of Shasta Groene. It would prevent the sort of victimisation I described of the teenage boy whose peers discovered his victimhood at the hands of a pedophile. And while the one evil freak is now likely to get the chair, another is probably destroying the lives of dozens of other children and will keep doing so until he or she is also caught.

Hey, why not?

Crap!

I haven't been here for 4 months. How slack is that!

So what brings me here now? The truth is I'd rather not say, but part of the reason I'd rather not say is the very reason I'm going to impart this bit of information.

I'm here because a series of links from a writer's workshop website I visited last night as an alternative to the one I usually visit had a link to an MSNBC news item concerning the blog of a convicted sex offender who shall remain nameless, whose blog I am not going to name because neither deserve even that much consideration in my opinion. This blogger is the same prick who murdered two children, two adults and held Shasta Groene captive for 7 weeks before staff at Denny's in Coeur d'Alene recognised her in his company and called police.

I'm not usually in favour of the death penalty unless there is absolutely no doubt at all about the guilt of the offender and there are no extenuating circumstances. Frankly, I hope they burn this mofo alive. There isn't a death unpleasant enough for this scum except that to inflict such a death demeans those who would impose it. Lethal injection will suffice - and I can't think of it ever being more richly deserved.

I'm here because the blog in question specifically FAILS to tell the truth either about the man who wrote it or what he had done. The sick f**k boasts about how he "got even" twice and hadn't been caught and that he couldn't be more frank about the contents of his blog except for the encrypted version.

I can just see it now. He's described in detail what he did on those two times he "got even" and he's selling subscriptions to pedophiles. When this bloody liar says he "got even twice", that's his abjectly dishonest euphemism for admitting he raped two more children. That is the extent of this filth's dishonesty.

I'm here because that disgusting freak of nature had the temerity to blog his daily life on a semi-regular basis as if there were any justification at all for his continued existence and deliberately omitted those events which he knew were ample reason to put him to the damn chair.

This scum of the earth was raping children yet coming across in his blog as some sort of victim of society - and says he is exactly that. Blaming the rest of us for his evil. It staggers me that anyone would go to the bother of blogging so aciduously in order to make people believe nothing out of the ordinary was happening when nobody suspected anything was happening - except the police who were at that point after him - and he was both hinting that something was about to unfold, but that he was merely an innocent victim of society once more and the police activity around him was neither fair, reasonable or justified.

Was there anyone ever so adept at manipulation in my lifetime as this filthy swine? I really struggle to believe so.

I am here because this filth wrote a blog. I am here because his blog was given credence by enough air heads to make it frightening. I am here now, blogging in my blog because sinister pus monkeys like him can have a blog and a famous one at that and my neglected blog is unknown.

That's why I'm here, that's why I really don't want to admit why I'm here and now you know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth as to why I am here now blogging these thoughts. My blog is unknown for the simple reason I have been too damn lazy to update it regularly and that's the full, frank and true admission of it.

I am offended that filth like him can have a blog that's read by thousands, that his absolute dishonesty is accepted on face value by dozens if not hundreds of people, that he even has supporters and others think and feel as he does and are even prepared to stand up and be counted and the efforts of innocent people are ignored - and by that, continuing the theme of full and frank admission, I don't just mean me and my blog, but the humdrum blogs of thousands of others just like me and not in the least like me - but all of us innocent of the evil perpetrated by this maggot - all of our blogs go unacknowledged.

I am offended and I am envious. I am offended that I am envious of this freak. How much more honest about this could I get? Am I vain in that respect? Guilty as charged, your honour. My writing is one of the very few things in this world I actually do take seriously. It's one of the few areas where criticisms of my efforts are keenly felt. It's my public achilles heal and whilst I have no problem at all acknowledging the superior efforts of people whose work I admire, like Terry Mertens' newsletter - All You Need to Know - and my perennial favourite, Rageboy, what I can't handle very well at all is people picking on my writing and the fact a grossly dishonest, hugely less talented and basically evil person, unknown except for the horror he wrought against children, gets a much greater readership than do I.

And I curse the fact I have no one to blame but myself, that the only reason his blog got the attention my own hasn't is because of my own damn laziness.

No excuses, no re-assigning blame, none of that. My honest confession is I am malevolently envious of possibly one of this young century's most evil people and I am so because he blogged far more often than I have and generated a following I have lost because of idleness.

So, let that be a lesson to you all. If you have these quasi aspirations that I have, you must be diligent and make what you want to happen happen. Don't just sit idly by and let daily opportunities slip through your fingers.

More to follow.

Of that you can now be certain.

The girl with OGA factor extending to the outer reaches of the Van Allen Belt touched me several times last week.

I don't know if those fleeting instances of physical contact did anything for her, but I got home and started scrounging through the cupboards for the meds they gave me after my last heart attack.

I also found out why it was so important for her to work in my office, not my co-worker's office. She said it's because I'm so cool.

At lunch, somehow a discussion got going about movie stars.

She said she'd be all over George Clooney like a rash. George is old enough to be her father.

But wait, there's worse.

She practically drooled over the thought of throwing Sean Connery down and screwing him senseless.

He's old enough to be her grandfather.

I'm only twice her age and she considers me cute enough to fight for a spot in my office, not my co-worker's office. And Nick is a good looking bloke in his early 20s.

We didn't do the lunch thing yesterday. For one thing, she with the OGA was moving house, nobody else was available for various reasons and the kid round the corner has gone weird for some reason and is avoiding me. I shouldn't say some reason, I'm pretty sure it's because physical evidence doesn't support the stories he's told me.

First one was saying how he gets breakfast at work provided by the company. Next day when I got a lift in with him - and the day after that - I was nursing his breakfast on my lap. So what happened to breakfast provided by work? He also told me work pays for the petrol in the car, but on the way in on day 3, we stopped off to fill the car - which he paid for with money he'd borrowed from his mum. So what's all that about? I didn't ask, but it seems pretty obvious that story 2 unravelled pretty quickly. Story 3, that the Beemer is in his name, insurance is in his name and rego is in his name is one I wouldn't be able to confirm without the help of friends in various industries. One of whom just happens to be right smack in the industry to find out with just one phone call. She works in the vehicle registration department.

What I have difficulty with is why is he lying to me? I mean, this is me! I've watched this kid grow up from 9 to 19, I helped him with his school work in his final year of high school - I'm as proud of him as if he were my own son. Hell, I love the little guy and he knows full well how fond I am of him, so why would he try to impress me by bignoting himself over his job? That's what I don't get.

And it reached its culmination last Wednesday when I rang up to ask if he was ready to leave for work and he said he was working in head office out east and wouldn't be able to give me a lift in. Then as I made my way from the station to the other side of the river to pick up the work they did over there the night before, I meet his brother walking the other way. If Andy had've caught the train, he would have caught the same train as I did. If the kid round the corner dropped him off, he'd be crossing the bridge from the other side of the river just as if his brother had dropped him off - which obviously he had - proving I could have scored a lift because he wasn't working out east at all - he just didn't want to give me a lift.

It's obvious if I'm to get to the bottom of this, I'm going to have to catch him out personally leaving him no way out but to give me a straight answer. What's the story boy?

Next week at work, the newbies are swapping offices. The bloke who shares the office with me is going to the other side of the river, the two girls on the other side of the river are going to be in the same building as me.

And the girl with the OGA got dibs on sharing my office before the other girl could get a word in.

Not having been present when the selection occurred, I have no idea how this came to pass nor what led up to it.

Anyway, next Sunday I've got a lunch thing happening. One of my old chat mates from those long ago days in mIRC is coming out to honour us with her presence. The kid round the corner has said he will come, I'm going to ask the girl with the OGA to be there as well and maybe someone else from the office - plus I'll do the old recruitment ring-around thing and see how many others I can get to tag along.

The real purpose of the thing is to get Mopster and OGA to meet and, with a bit of luck, fall hopelessly passionately in lust with each other - thereby getting me off the hook. The rest is just a smokescreen but tailored to be entertaining enough to disguise the real purpose of the event so well, that even anyone with inside knowledge - ie anyone reading this blog - would fail to recognise it for what it is.

Besides, it's my birthday so what better excuse to have a party with a few friends along.

Why the hell did the OGA girl have to be so adamant and enthusiastic about getting her arse in the seat next to me at work.

I only clapped eyes on the OGA girl a few times very briefly this week. She was in the office on the other side of the river and I had only brief reasons to be there.

Except for tonight when we had a divisional conference where my promotion as team leader hangs rudely in the air like a giant's penis about to be exposed.

There we sat in the same room for an hour while the boss went on about the tantalising developments awaiting our little group. And they are tantalising.

But every time I stole a glimpse at the OGA girl, she caught me looking. Not that it seemed to bother her, I got that OGA smile constantly - or should that be consistently - but mercifully, it's one of equality and mutual respect. Shit, she's so damn CUTE. Fuck it.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm the job........

I was going to bung this in The Swamp but then I thought it's not actually Swamp worthy so I'd put it here instead. (It's not Swampworthy because The Swamp has a certain style about it, my blog doesn't - it's just me airing the windmills of my mind.

It's just that today there's a fucking cyclone happening. Here, cop this...

I landed a new job the other week.

Just me, the boss and three other blokes but we are the foundation of a whole new department and I'm pegged to co-run my half of the arrangement with a few extra responsibilities thrown in for good measure.

The first of the new arrivals landed on us on Wednesday.

One other bloke, two women and a...

May I be struck down dead for saying this...

A goddess.

Unbelievable.

What's more unbelievable is the fact I'm telling this to all of you.

Rat, the consummate misogynist going wobbly at the knees over a woman. But wait, there's more.

And it's worse.

She is not only mind bogglingly attractive - not in the Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss sense of the word - but in that down to earth, downright earthy sense of the word. In other words, that eminently obtainable sort of attractive that makes thinking of anything else damn near impossible. Yeah so?

Well, besides being distractingly sensational in the visage department, she's also got a stunning personality. I mean she's like Instant Mate - just add coinciding presence and there's an instant friendship. She's impossible not to like. Distractingly impossible to ignore.
But wait there's even worse.

She's younger than me. I'm not being reality distortingly attracted to an older woman for once, this one is much younger than I am. I checked. I actually asked how old she is when we were riding up in the lift together. I know you're dying to know how old she is but suffice to say she is well and truly legal even if the thoughts flooding my head are really really immoral.
And she's so damn friendly, bugger it. I don't care that the html tags probably won't work, you get the idea.

She has her tongue pierced too and I've seen Pulp Fiction so I know what a tongue piercing is all about. Does it get any worse than this?

Well, no.

She is unbelievably distracting, that's true BUT...

Like the newsagent's wife - I haven't told you about her yet - she has one fatal flaw.
Despite the Oh God Attraction hereinafter referred to as the O.G.A., she is a weeny bit on the umm dumb side. Not much, just enough to bung up a weeny red flag.

And yes, she's a little bit blonde too. Just a bit. More mousey brown than blonde but enough blonde to be unnervingly noticeable. Numbingly dumb, just not enough to be mind-numbingly dumb. Only enough numbingly dumb to dampen to a degree the throwing up of a major red flag.
It's just fortunate I have really good eyesight.

Damn, she's so cute though. I mean unbelievably cute. Not perfectly cute like Meg Ryan just enough to make me want to throw a herd of Meg Ryans out of the way to sit and stare at my new workmate until my really good eyesight becomes a distant memory.

My other source of refuge is she can't spell to save herself. I have the honour to enter all her work into the system for despatch to the branches and her lack of any skill whatsoever in the legibility stakes is something to behold in itself. She can do her job, no doubt about that - which, of course makes it worse for me because of the O.G.A. because if she couldn't do her job, I'd get really bloody annoyed really bloody quickly - and she doesn't do her job in eye range of me - because if she did, there's no way I'd be able to do my job, I'd just sit and stare at her all day.
She has a smile to die for and her laugh, God in Heaven! Bugger that too. Why wasn't she born with a hare lip. There's nothing inherently wrong with a cleft palate unless you actually happen to have one and it serves beautifully to ensure you will never be endowed with anything approaching an O.G.A. thereby sparing me the inconvenience of being attracted on an Oh God scale.

I must introduce her, somehow, to the kid round the corner. He's the same age as she is. If he hooked up with her, that would spare me the thought that somehow she might actually be distressingly single and available. He's also got a massive chick-magnet: A BMW.
Wonder if he'd do me that one big favour.

I knew he'd come in useful one day if I made sure I kept on his good side all these years. Who knows, he may even thank me properly for the introduction. Mind you, he might not be enamoured of

Nah, he would be. He's like all 19 year olds; fast, loud and horny as all get out. What real red-blooded male wouldn't leap all over a like minded godess with a huge O.G.A. factor.

Bloody hell. Why me?

I love this job. I get to be exactly the way I was meant to be and then this happens and now mother nature is having her say and she doesn't care to be ignored and I'm putting too many ands in one sentence.

My job will save me. It's more important than the sudden and pervasive quantities of testerone streaming through my giblets and I will remain steadfastly professional towards her and the others in my team.

I will. I am rehearsing a mantra for Monday morning...

Mmmmmmmmmmm My Job....... mmmmmmmmmm my job.....

More to follow, no doubt...

I bet the job I have is better than the job you have.

I get to talk to people all day until the time when I get to do even better things and it's all in the name of helping people help themselves. What's more I was offered this job by a beautiful woman and now it's progressing apace. (No, the job, not the beautiful woman. Sheesh, you should know me better than that by now.)

My first week was such a blinder I can scarcely wait to start the second week.

Great people, great location, love the office and fkn LOVE the job and it's going to get even better very very shortly. When they give me a key, I can see myself setting up a camp bed in there and working 24/7 (ish.)

Go on tell me how jealous you are.

Ok, here I am dutybound to blog something which, for me at any rate, is always a pleasure.

Call me every dirty name under the sun but there are times when I just LOVE name-dropping and having been poking around one of the few blogs actually worthy of the time, I'm taking this opportunity to bomb google with a link to THE blog. Not just any blog, but THE blog.

The mother of all blogs.

Now here's something you don't know.

In my other bit of blattery, I chided the BLOG god because of an extended period of introspection and he finally got jack of it - and rightly so I might add - and let me know in no uncertain terms what he thought of it. Funny thing is though, another subscriber thought it was him and cursed me out black and blue. The BLOG god was being introspective, the other bloke was, correction IS, seriously in danger of disappearing into his own navel never to be seen again.

He took a swipe at me after the third in the Self Help trilogy of my newsletter came out, but only because he doesn't have the means to come after me with a gun.

In this battle of egos, I'm left wondering where I sit. On one hand, the BLOG god told me off and that was fair enough, but this other bloke went ballistic. Touched a nerve I guess. I love my subscribers and fortunately I haven't lost this chap, but his ego must have taken a pounding for him to come out swinging like that. My ego was, on the one side restored to its rightful place in the natural equilibrium, but on the other, it wasn't remotely budged by this other chap - whom it must be said I hold in fairly high esteem as well - who went right off thinking I was writing about him.

Here's why I wasn't moved:

There's a place for poetry and it's not under my eyes. I hate poetry. Despise it. I like odes, but poetry is for cancerous old browniehounds entering their dotage and taking the opportunity to behave like teenangsters and I spurn them openly.

I'm also not fond of teenangsters.

Am I dithering a bit here? I suppose I am a bit but I have an excuse and if any of you had taken the time to explore where those hyperlinked words go, you'd understand instantly why I have taken this opportunity to express these loosely connected thoughts here.

Here's the bit that got me:

I ran across the following via Technorati while ego-surfing for CBO links. David Churbuck, the blogger what wrote it, is an old pal (more about which below), but we'd been out of touch for years. So, just for the record, I had nothing to do with this glowing endorsement.

So that's why I've taken this opportunity to splatter CBO links all over this particular entry.

Incidentally, and this is a confession and a half on my part, I replied to the email I received with words to the effect that next time any of my beloved subscribers badgered me to put out one of my newsletters, I'd tell them to fuck off. So, just to set your minds at rest, I was not in anyway directed to make amends for my latest screed nor was I admonished in such fashion that I feel or felt obliged to resume my place in the general scheme of e-things. No. The reason I am so blatantly fawning - yes fawning - is because unlike the preceeding episode which precipitated my three in a row rant against navel gazing, the linkages above all lead to something I not only enjoy immensely, but reckon anyone brave enough to click on one of those links will also enjoy just possibly enough to even thank me for pointing them in the right direction.

After all, this is the bloke who started me writing on the internet in the first place.

Don't like it? Blame him. I'm sure he'll give you the same response I will for wasting his time but will be fascinated to know who sent you.

Would that you did because you'll thank me later if there's even a shred of decency about you. Lord knows there isn't one about me.

How do people get better in hospitals?

The food is enough to kill an ox. I got served this nukey boxed laundry sponge the other day which was supposed to be a crumbed fillet of whiting.

I took one look under the tin lid and pushed the tray away before it attacked me.

"What" you may ask, "was I doing back in hospital?"

Well, I'm glad you asked, and I'll provide as much detail as possible so you don't have to send emails asking for even more detail because I don't like that sort of thing.

It's common knowledge I've had two heart attacks over the last 30 months, but what you probably didn't know is that the bits of me that are supposed to keep my blood healthy are themselves not entirely functioning on high beam. The result is my blood is full of shit that shouldn't be there and the trespassers in my system love it. In 2003, one of these little bastards made its home in one of my valves, brought its friends and lovers around for a housewarming and before anyone knew what was going on, bug city was a thriving metropolis, thriving its little heart out - in my heart.

Yes I know, what a bunch of bastards.

The upshot of it is I get angina on a regular basis and bad tempered on an almost permanent basis and hospitalised with annoying regularity.

Years ago when my kidneys failed and I spent 6 days in hospital, the food was great. I ate better in hospital than I do at home and I'd snoop around looking for seconds. But since 2002, it has been a gastronomic nightmare. When I was last in hospital in 2003, my hopes of a return to culinary form from those in charge of the mess tent were dashed. It was just tasteless, tepid papier mache dross, the likes of which you wouldn't even expect in a railway diner. How they could possibly have made it any worse is a mystery, but they have.

I've been in and out for the last two weeks (give or take) with more than one overnight stay and my desperation to be discharged is directly proportional to the quality of the food. Or more accurately, the apparent danger of eating anything they put in front of me.

I had to get discharged if only to allay my hunger. Never mind if I had to be readmitted 36 hours later, and it's not like they care. Every time they readmit me, they get a budgetary allowance from the government for more than it really costs to keep me from slipping off the twig altogether.

That carefully disguised item they tried to tell me was fish looked more like something they'd hit with a broom, stunned with lemon juice then smothered with corn flake crumbs before finally leaving it infront of a radar because the ovens were on the fritz.

Sure they can autoclave the cutlery for the sake of hygiene but what's the point of eating with perfectly sanitary cutlery when the meal itself is so damn suspect? It either wasn't properly dead, or it had been dead for 270 years. Either way, it was not going to find its way past my epiglotis.

I don't get scared very easily - that comes with not giving a shit about very much - but when I lifted that lid the other day, I damn near panicked. If someone tried to make me eat that, my only recourse would have been to hit out or make a run for it. And I wasn't properly dressed to make a run for it.

My blood has enough shit in it without adding to it artificially by eating food that defies description as well as identification.

So that's about when I discharged myself, spurred on by an instinct for self preservation and a rumbly tummy that wanted something it could not only hope to ingest, but could actually convert to something useful to me and not the colonies living in the valves of my heart.

I wobbled my way to a taxi and went home for a Vegemite sandwich, a cup of coffee and three cigarettes before falling asleep on the couch after the cricket finished. (Australia beat West Indies.)

I'm not supposed to be smoking either. It's bad for my heart. Too bad. I still maintain trying to stop me smoking is bad for the whole world. I'm angry, nasty and ornery enough without being denied my little indulgence.

Only thing is now I haven't worked for more than two weeks and I can't even afford a bus ride to my next job appointment or even to put juice in the car for the appointment after that.

But I still have the internet until Feb 15 when my ISP tries to get it's monthly due and discovers there's nothing there. After that, your guess is as good as mine on whether or not I shall be able to invade cyberspace and frighten up a few lefties.

Here's to the future: Let's get it over with as quickly as possible.

Bloggy Hell It's ChatRat

I've written one book and got the play finished. Now I have two books floating around in my head. One is the second volume of The Swamp, the name of which I'm tentatively (and tantalisingly dangerously) thinking will contain the name of one of the singularly most unimpressive retail establishments which has success in the market place conversely relative to the quality of its merchandise thanks to the stupidity of the mindless automaton victims of annoying marketing tactics who shop there. I'm talking about K-Mart.

Yes, I'm giving serious consideration to putting K-Mart in the title of the second collection of Swamp missives.

The title I have swimming around in that cerebral cesspool otherwise known as my head goes something along the lines of "The dreams of morons who shop at K-MART are just like the stuff they buy there: CRAP. So that from a distance, it looks like K-MART are CRAP.

Shit, I'm missing Voyager.

Piss off and do something constructive instead of wasting your synapses on the internet.

In his first visit to the sunken wreck of the Titanic since 1985, Bob Ballard was shocked at how fast the wreckage had deteriorated and he wants the US Congress to pass legislation giving greater protection ot the sunken vessel.

Huh?

The tub is in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean - international waters. And it's two miles down.

Bob Ballard says most alarming is the damage caused by submersibles landing on the deck.

Damage? It's a fucking shipwreck. Let's just put a little perspective on this. The boat's fucked. It's not like you can paddle your inflatable dinghy out to take photos of the thing on a sunny Sunday afternoon, it's at the bottom of the ocean and you need serious cash and not a little gumption to land a submersible on it. For what purpose and to whose benefit is it to 'preserve' a decaying hunk of metal so far removed from Joe Public the only ones who care what happens to it are those thinking they can profit from it somehow.

Including Bob Ballard.

And what kind of absurd conceit firstly to approach the US Congress to IMPOSE a solution on the rest of the population of planet Earth concerning a decaying lump of metal 2 miles beneath the surface of the middle of nowhere, and secondly to actually believe they would or could do anything to make sure Bob Ballard's rights are given preference over these vandals to make money out of the Titanic at the expense of those who are actually now investing their time, money and lives beating him to the spoils.

I want to kill Bob Ballard. People that unbalanced are a danger to the gene pool.

What a cunt.

And there's more from today's edition of MX that has for the moment planted me firmly into a world of surrealism.

Junk food ads are set to be banned before 9pm in Britain because pommy kids are turning into fat little pooh bears. This is a move to 'protect' children watching early evening television.

Can anyone else see 500 million cubic feet of irony here or is it just me?

And finally...

Ian Fothergill has started up his own business removing dog shit from the backyards of the dogs' owners. With such an outstanding degree of laziness on the part of dog owners in Tasmania, I am looking forward to an exponential increase of double chins on both faces of the two headed Australians.

This week is not the week to be buying up big on lottery tickets methinks. Then again, with this much weird shit happening here and around the world, maybe karma is so fucked up right now, it may give me a win by accident.

There are people employed to be at the service of others. These people are supposed to be encouraging of their clients and whilst catering to the needs of their clients, they're also supposed to ensure their clients meet their part of the bargain.

What a dicey situation in which to be.

If these agents were good, I'd live in their offices. But they're not. They walk this intricate web which marks the boundaries between those who use the service on one side, those who use it on the other side and their own needs as an independent business.

In other words, they're pimps.

These pimps dress in business attire and talk the talk of the business type individual.

So, naturally without being offensive you understand, I do my very best to circumvent all this straight lacedness. In short, I swear a lot. I do it in a non-threatening way of course; I wouldn't want to cause any actual offence - or commit one, but there is no way I'm going to allow them to get the better of me in any way, shape or form.

I'm their client. They are my agent. I can take my business elsewhere if I don't like them and they had just better remember that. In short, they have to put up with my shit whether they like it or not. If I do something outlandish, as is fairly often the case, they have to live with it. End of story.

I just got off the phone to my agent and told him of my latest bit of writing, which was pretty much 90% bullshit, but the punter bought it hook, line and sinker. I told my agent it was pretty much all bullshit and if the punter checks it, I'm basically fucked. And with the usage of the words "bullshit" and "fucked" I could hear my agent squirm in his seat with the discomfiture of it.

The sound of someone's unease through the telephone is, I just rediscovered, immensely amusing.

Here's something you might like to try...

Ring someone up and ask them if they want the good news or the bad news. Guage their reaction. Tell me if I'm wrong about this.
If they say they want the good news, just tell them to Google "ChatRat" and let them find out for themselves what the good news is. If they ask for the bad news, tell them you've been reading this blog and have all manner of evil ideas.

It's more fun when you don't care.

No, I mean when you REALLY don't care. :)

Well I'm just too good!

I have just one option for selling a book through CafePress.com and I put out a collection of my internet musings over the last 3 years, designed a front cover, back cover and spine and within two days, one charming individiual had already bought it.

So how good do you think I feel right now!

The Swamp is and has been my pride and joy on the net since May 2001 and all this time later, It has accrued 98 messages in total and ZERO FlyBuys points!

I've been trying to get someone on my side of the International Date Line to buy the thing and snail mail it to me, but no luck so far. I've offered to pay for it, of course and I've even offered to pay for a second copy so some lucky punter with a credit card could order two, send both to me upon receipt of my payment, then I'd autograph one and send it back.

I mean, how good's that?

You get a free book AND it's autographed by the author and all it has cost, basically, is a few bits of clickage from the comfort of your own home.

Go on, be brave...

The Little Shop of Rat's.

And after having quit all my msn groups bar one or two (down from about 13) I finally put my pyreighted version of Photoshop to good use and designed a few t-shirts.

Forty of them in 4 weeks to be precise.

There's a link to the "Ratwears" bit of my e-boggery in the Batcave

Only trouble is, I didn't factor postage into the price of the things too well. I'd thought, yeah, $6.50 for international postage but it ain't. It's $10.50 for the first shirt and $8 per shirt after that.

So basically, I set the price too low and ferked myself in the arse costwise.

I am going to have to come up with something really cunning now or the sale of shirts is going to send me to the wall. So if you're going to go and have a look, just look. Don't buy. At least not until I've had a chance to build up some sort of inventory.

As for the rest of the wonderful world according to The Rat, it's better to be safe and happy in your own home town than visit Rat in his and be forever disatisfied with your own hovel afterwards.

Ah, the joys of living in Melbourne.

It's almost better than chocolate. :)

In the world of idiots, there are those who acknowledge the fact they're idiots and there are those who never will.

I don't like either variety.

If you just happen to be an idiot, do your best to hide the fact, preferably by keeping your fingers off the fucking keyboard. If you can't supress the urge to write, at least have the decency not to tell everyone you're an idiot. If we have to put up with your inane dribble, we sure as hell don't want to have your dirty laundry waved in our faces as well.

Netizens should be harsh with idiots. Stomp them back into the ground wherever you encounter them. They are not worthy of taking up bandwidth. They are the reason supermarkets were invented. They have no idea about what they want so they just grab whatever is available, hence Safeway make a fortune out of them. If these idiots had brains, they'd take a shopping list, spend one third as much as they do and keep the express lanes clear for people who actually do have a brain.

Bastards.

It's these idiots who feel that just because they have a place to splatter their braindead opinions around the place that others actually want to read them. Get a clue, dippies, we don't.

Nobody gives a fuck about your boyfriend/girlfriend troubles - unless you stitched them up in amusing fashion. Nobody cares about the problems your kids are having at school. They're probably fat little pooh bears anyway. Euthanise them now before they make other people suffer later. Fat fuckers are the worst kind of loonies. It's true, just watch an episode of Rikki or Springer and see just how many fat fucks there are on those shows.

Pasty faced morons.

I watch one episode per year of those shows and nothing changes except the level of my incredulity that anyone can be that fucking stupid. It makes it easy to see how Bush got elected.

I'm fed to the back teeth of idiots - especially on the net.

I bailed from almost all of my haunts. Just packed my shit up and left. At least here I can tell you all what a pack of thick mother fuckers you are and nobody is going to assail me with their "Oh yeah, well guess what..." Especially stupid people try that thinking I somehow give a tinker's damn what they think or that they're going to have some sort of influence on my thinking.

Here's a hint: I don't care what you think. If you don't like what I've said, sux to be you. If you do like what I've said, good for you, I still don't want to know about it. Just go about your daily business and don't try to engage me in your tiny little worlds because I'm not interested.

This is my vent space, not yours. And my email is for people I want to email, it's not for you to tell me what I already know - that you're not happy with what I've said, and by default, that you are an out and out moron.

My advice is to go teach a pig to speak. It will doubtless prove more intelligent than you anyway.

Writing in short choppy sentences is neither attractive nor artistic. Elongating them is just ugly self indulgence. To put it bluntly, just put it bluntly.

I dislike male authors who write for typically female audience for the same reasons I dislike women authors. There’s just too much damn clutter and a propensity for not telling it like it is, but giving the author’s impression and why. I want to read the story. I want to get from start to finish in as entertained a fashion as I can not spend the entire time trying to sift through the psychological baggage of the author. I have my own baggage; I don’t want theirs as well. I bought the book because I want to read a story, not get an author’s impression of events.

Fortunately, I didn’t buy the book.

Nor will I recommend it and anyone who asks me if I have read it is going to be told I put it back on the shelf after reading the first three pages and skimming through bits and pieces of it. I cut to the chase but even that was painfully beset with literary clutter. I was expecting at any time to see the author address the reader with an example of how an event their life was eerily similar to the story in the book. Instead, I was left thinking the author must have issues with which they can only deal by writing things down in the third person as if these terrible events happened to someone else – only the events weren’t terrible, they were just terribly dull. Anyone who spends two entire pages describing rain hitting a storefront window and being reminded of a family barbecue is not writing a story, they’re wasting time. And for anyone who cares to notice, the beads of condensation running down the sides of a glass filled with champagne look absolutely nothing like raindrops running down a huge storefront window. No they don’t.

This particular book was written by a woman. I’m not going to tell you her name or the name of the book, so don’t waste your time asking. The fact is, I didn’t get the author’s name and I forget the title of the book.

I found myself looking at books because of two I’ve had my nose in recently. The first is the thousand page documentary of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer and I find myself questioning the accuracy of his work which really is off putting. I’ve already spotted one mistake – or out and out lie, I’m not sure which – and a fair amount of other stuff just doesn’t quite gel with other information I have.

The other book is Account Settled by Hjalmar Schact, who was Hitler’s Minister of Economics from 1934 until 1937. Now, Schact is no writer but he has a hell of a story and it’s the story that is interesting. In fact, it’s better than interesting. There just isn’t a whole lot of aesthetic detail.

Shirer’s book is fascinating for its historical value, but he smatters the pages with his personal opinions. The truth is, he wasn’t present when Ribbentrop signed the Non-Aggression Pact with Stalin, so he has no claim to report how the two men behaved that night based on the available information.

Where Shirer was present in Germany and Austria prior to 1939, he gives descriptions of parades, radio broadcasts, the mood of the populace and so on. That’s valid as far as I’m concerned.
The rest isn’t.

Is it just me, or are things changing in the world of authors?

My god has it really been 6 months since I last blogged here?

Incredible.

The reason is twofold. I've had writer's block since October last year when some fucked up shit went down in a chatroom and I just didn't feel like being sociable any more. The second reason is because I've been really going berserk fixing up my lovely website.

I have to admit, I really am tickled with the Batcave and also Bravenet web services. I can't recommend them highly enough.

The Batcave (www2.batcave.net) gives you oodles of space and functionality and the freedom to do pretty much whatever you want to do except link to pictures from outside or post porn - but let's face it, porn is so prevalent on the internet these days, it's boring as hell. It makes a change arriving at a site that doesn't actually contain porn.

I have good stuff to laugh at instead. Lots of links leading all over the place and the best part is, since converting the site to a framed site, most of the links are going to bugger up the visitor until I get it all straightened out. I've not done too badly so far. Most of it opens where it's supposed to open.

I didn't Swamp for ages either. 4 months. Gads, my subscribers must have thought I'd given up on them. They knew I wasn't dead or missing in action because they emailed me from time to time to make sure. Isn't that sweet.

I finished my play, converted the archive of the Swamp to pdf format and put both the play and The Swamp up for sale in the batcave too. Had to open a PayPal account to get it all kicking along, but what the hell... now that the account is up and running - and I've started getting money in it - I can put other stuff up for sale as well - my beloved idea of t-shirts and earthware.

Bliss!

Well that's my news, http://chatrat.batcave.net <-- that's my website. It might not look like much to you, but I like it and it's all my own doing.

Nice start to 2004 for The Rat.

:)

To the whiney bitches of the world, collectively and singularly, I say to thee a right royal Fuck Off...

People know I'm rude, nasty, cold hearted, abusive - I'm the embodiment of everything undesirable about males who don't actually go out and inflict physical damage on others or their property.

So I can have civilised conversations which invariably involve the following phrases: I'm single. I'm not looking for a relationship. I loathe all that cutesy pie namby pamby shite, teddy bears and all the bovex associated with Kleenex ads.

And just because I don't (or didn't) go off and abuse [SHE] in this or another conversation, she suddenly thinks she's the exception to the rule, the one who can crack this tough exterior. To her surprise, she finds I'm not impressed and one foot wrong, one word out of place and the icy blast is going to be turned on her just as it is turned on every other dumb bimbo who crosses the bounds of commonsense and my predilection for misogyny.

I told you, I've been telling you as long as you've known me. I'm single, I'm staying that way, I don't want no relationship with someone who is going to expect me home for dinner, who is going to iron my shirts and tut tut because I'm not eating right.

Did you actually have the gaul to think you were going to change me? Change ME???

So, you were on the receiving end of something you found contradicted this stupid idea you've been harbouring that underneath the rough tough exterior, I'm really a sweet guy and you're all hurt and offended. Would it have paid you to remember those sage words I told you when you first started talking to me? I'm a bastard. I have no heart and you can't change me because I don't want to change.

So then what happens?

She runs off and gossips to her friends who all know me as well that I'm some kind of bastard and the shit starts flying in every fucking direction.

Did I ever tell ANYONE anywhere that I'm anything BUT a bastard or an arsehole?

Did I ever at any stage invite you to become emotionally attached to me? No, I most certainly did not.

If you play with fire, you get burnt. Simple. Don't think you are any different from anyone else. You're not.

If you think you can make me change by withdrawing yourself from me and telling EVERYONE that I'm such a bastard, that I lead you on only to turn on you later, you are mistaken.

I am your second to worst nightmare. I am the one who, when he says doesn't give a shit, actually means it.

I came to the internet with no net friends. I found plenty. If you fuck off and start gossipping and telling everyone about me, I don't care. Everytime you say "ChatRat" somewhere on the internet, my identity get's a kick along in the search engine rankings. Talk about me as much as you like, the more you do, the more people realise I am exactly what I say I am. A cold-hearted bastard.

So, new on ChatRat's list of the emotionally damned and terminally stupid are:

Ka-silly-lilly, self proclaimed crone of blogdom - for actually having the stupidity to take on Rageboy at all, and not knowing he has associates who possibly care even less than he does that people like you exist. Know thine enemy, Lily. And know also that there is nothing whatsoever you can do or say to anyone that has the slightest negative impact on me whatsoever.

Silly-Kimi, 26 year old psychotherapist and seriously insane dropkick bitch from hell - not only for possibly losing your home and what-all else on account of a teenage guy who lives on the other side of the planet, but for ACTUALLY relating this contemptible story of your own loss to ME ---- AFTER I told you what a stupid bitch you are in the first place. You actually deserve an award for your stupidity, Kim. It ranks right up there with the very best of them.


**********************IMPORTANT MESSAGE*****************************

People think I'm angry when I write screeds like this. They have this absurd notion that all is not well, that the cause of all this apparent angst is goings on which really have nothing to do with me or are inconsequential and I should just get over it.

To them, I simply have to reiterate, I don't care what you think.

I'm not angry, I enjoy this. It makes me feel more superior than I usually feel and I feel pretty damn superior most of the time.

So, you either marvel at my skill with a sharp word or you shut the fuck up and keep your opinions to yourself.

If I get something wrong, if I have the wrong end of the stick, or I seem to have misjudged the situation, see the above point.

Where do you go when your major interest - the one with the subcribing audience - Topica.com fucks up?

You come here and blog. That's what blogs are for after all...

I mean WHO in their right minds actually subscribes anywhere any more to get emails?

It's hard enough getting people to visit your website you know the one:



Sheesh... I know that's going to look awful if Blogger doesn't convert that html for you, but we live in hope.

I'd totally forgotten what I wrote a week ago about that black spot thing.
Not that it really mattered, no graffiti artists have done it and emailed me to tell me about it.

Ho hum... does anyone read blogs any more or are they all just preoccupied with message boards where they can tell the owner or hosts to go jump if something doesn't suit them?

I read Rageboy's blog from time to time. (I do prefer the EGR mailouts though). I hate visiting someone's website and all you get is links away from their website. Is that just me or does anyone else find that too? Links around the site are fine, links away from it just strike me as a waste of time.

If this is not how you feel and you have a website of your own, feel free to visit the batcave, rip the masthead and put it up as a link in your own site. I don't mind. You can always tell people you have some seriously insane friends and one in particular has started making demands... you know, put the link up or I'll drive my Winabago through your fishpond - crap like that.

What is it with internet personas?

Why do a few people find it necessary to have 20928204683502975 different nicknames or identities IN THE ONE SITE?

Want to see what I mean?

Check out the member list of an msn community called philosophy and absurdity...



It shouldn't take you long to find out who wins the schizoid of the year award. For that matter, it shouldn't take long to work out the runner up either.

You wanna find me? You look for ChatRat... that simple.

I worry about people who come on the internet with that many different identities. Once you get to know who's behind all of them, you understand why they do it and it has nothing to do with anything worthwhile. It's madness. Pure and simple. These different identities belonging to the same person respond to their own messages. True! I think I may start being rude to one of those identities and feign ignorance. Madness I tell you.

Megalomania is one thing and I can fully understand and appreciate that. After all, it's my form of mental illness!

But this pseudo schizophrenia? Bleh.. forget it.

Oh well.. it's late, I'm tired and I'm going to bed.

If you've read this far, you may as well keep reading. See if you can find out something interesting.

Let me know if you do.

I suppose I'd better actually do something here again, it has been over a month now since I bothered.

I'm busy at the website, dammit.

I love a good paradox, don't you? Ever been to Adbusters.org? A link from their site will lead you to unbrandamerica.com which gives birth to a new paradox. Actually it's an old paradox with a new slant. Well, it's not even an old paradox with a new slant, it's just your run of the mill paradox.

It's a campaign by people fed up with pop-culture (whatever the hell that means) to put black spots on major advertising icons like Coca Cola and Nike and any other famous brand with a billboard somewhere. The idea is to get us all to think like individuals! Stop being led like sheep at the behest of the advertisers! Be subversive and tell the whole world you're not going to play their game any more!!

Listen to US!! We won't lead you astray ;)

It's all in the name of subversion.

Can you see the paradox forming right before your eyes or am I just being paranoid?

It gave me an idea though... My internet persona is the Rat. ChatRat to be nomenclaturatively correct, but Rat will do just fine.

I'd like to send a message to any and all graffiti artists all over the planet to try to outdo themselves putting RAT all over the place. Whether it's a tag or a full on work of art, I want to see RAT everywhere.

The idea is, if graffiti artists and taggers put their own tags all over the place, the authorities take photographs and stow those pics away for use as evidence if the perpetrator gets caught. That way they can be charged for each individual tag or bit of graffiti they have done.

Now, if all of them tagged or did a stirling bit of art with RAT as the theme, it'll lead back to me. And it's just not possible for me to have been in all those places at once. It must therefore be a movement, a conspiracy - and I'll gladly take the rap for that!

The bozos in their little plastic boxes will try to lay the blame for the actual "vandalism" on me and failing with that little charge, they won't be able to get me in court for it again. What's more, I will have no idea at all who is doing it so they won't be able to charge me with aiding and abetting, conspiracy or any other bullshit charge.

Incitement to commit an offence? Possibly, but they're going to have a hard time doing that as well.

The message to the plastic box people is simple - We're withdrawing our support of your stupid ideas and replacing it with NOTHING! That's right, we don't have any political message at all, except to say that we're no longer listening to yours.

We're saying to advertisers that we're listening to each other, not you. We laugh at your efforts to make us believe what you want us to believe, buy what you want us to buy, do what you want us to do. Our message to you is NOTHING. We don't have a message for you. We're too busy doing what we want to do even to bother thinking about you.

The bricks in the wall might be yours, but the message on the wall is ours and our message is that you can't stop us from saying what we want to say.

Taggers and graffiti artists everywhere - Go the RAT! Put RAT tags and art all over the place. Take pics of your work and send them to me - chatrat@graffiti.net

Let them try to blame me for a world wide campaign of shut the fuck up and listen for a change.

The writing has been on the wall for thousands of years - now it's going to have a voice. How loud the voice depends on how many RATs are visited upon the cities throughout the world.

Visit the Batcave and leave your mark there... http://chatrat.batcave.net

See what it's all about and don't become a part of it. Instead, see what it's all about and DO LIKEWISE. Be different from it, apart from it and in support of its ideals. Don't be a follower, be a co-author. Don't say what I'm saying, don't even do what I do, just see what CAN be said and see what CAN be done and SAY and DO what YOU want to say and do. Get it?

My message is "You can have your own message"

Well, the website is happening apace again...

All the updates and necessary interactivity is up and running and growing by the week.
Since I know you're all just bursting to have a look at it, here's the url:

http://chatrat.batcave.net

Well, if you were hanging on "until tomorrow" like my last post said, and it's now more than 6 months since I was last here, SORRY!

I've been busy doing other things and blogger has been giving me a hard time as far as publishing this blog goes.
It seems the outside world can't get anything more than what I put up about 12 months ago now.

If this post happens to make it, nobody is going to know what the hell I've been talking about all this time.
Then again, that's nothing unusual.

Anyway, go check out the website and tell me what you think of it. There are plenty of bits and pieces you can use on board to do that, you don't have to resort to emailing me.

Ok, that's it for me for the time being... I'm going back to tinker with bits and pieces.

Toodle pip.

Perhaps the comedy career is going to actually eventuate this year. If I had more than 5 minutes to tell you all about it, I would. But I haven't so there. I'll be back tomorrow though, so you won't have long to wait.

It should almost go without saying that issues of class and status are of very little concern to me. However, some casual observations of my neighbours highlight the enormous deficit between them and people with whom I like to associate.

Regular dippers into The Swamp will know of the screaming horsewhipper on one side and silent but deadlies on the other.

The Swamp

The screaming horsewhipper has no class whatsoever. She screams like a 747 every waking moment of her day. I'm hoping the Crocodile Hunter will lasso her mouth very very soon.

The silent but deadlies also have no class. They broke up recently, and Mr silent but deadly turned up on the doorstep today with his mother and they both waited outside for Mz silent but deadly to emerge. Where's their dignity for crying out loud?

However, we also have a wildebeest in the unit adjoining this one who once had class, but has become resentful because she's now as ugly as 50 pigs and knows it. She still retains a modicum of deportment, but her manners are atrocious. She's the sort you'd harpoon at a beach.

Then there's me!

I sneer at pretensions. I wear old, ripped and faded clothes, I rarely shave and I swear a lot. (You may have noticed.) I loathe pretty things, hate ornaments and kitsch, I'm not fond of pets and generally avoid children.

I'm not into social airs and graces, however ignorance is abysmal. If one is going to be an arsehole, one should at least do it well, and do it consistently.

So, the rules of social behaviour according to the Rat are as follows:

Don't upset people accidently. Don't burp or fart in public unless you intend to display a degree of contempt. Then hold the eyes of the victim and burp or fart with gusto. Just as some pictures are worth a thousand words, a sturdy fart can be more eloquent than any verbal offering. The victim knows the intent and significance of the gesture and that in your eyes, they are beneath words - that a normal display of contempt simply won't suffice.

Avoid the word "nice" like the plague. Assail your audience with grandiose words, like sumptuous, exquisite, scintillating, resplendent or superlative. (Avoid the word "agreeable" as this is pompous and nobody likes pomposity.)

Nothing is sacred except bad taste. You can become the focus of everyone's attention by an eloquent expression of poor taste.
For example:
"Which of you ladies is wearing Essence de Poisson?"
"I think this grated fresh parmessan is actually chopped toenails."
"Dandruff is acceptable in those parts of the world where eating dead babies means survival for another fortnight."

Well, one for the books...

I've moved my Swamp from Topica.com to Dwev.net because half the subscribers were complaining that they weren't getting my posts. Now half the subscribers are complaining that they didn't get the most recent post. (Including me, but that's usual because I haven't been getting my own stuff for months.)

I have to start being nice to a certain person because he twisted his boss's arm so I could have some (more) free web space to do something self destructive. When I put some content there, it'll be at http://chatrat.hisplace.net. Sounds almost Spanish, but it's not. It's Aussie. I'm going to be a lab-rat to see what sort of response I can generate. If it turns out to be successful, they'll offer it to other people.

I have to confess to being in awe of The Onion and Fark.com, so I think I'll do something along those lines, with the added bonus of some personal ads. You know the variety...

Man with big hands wishes to meet wealthy blind woman with big boobs... Phone Richard Kiel on +1 212 555 TITS

It occured to me that the biggest users of the internet are women who like to chat and young males who like to play Counterstrike. Well, I don't mind chatting, but Counterstrike bores me shitless. "Fire in the hold!" I wish it was a fire in your A drive, just quietly. So, a-hunting for obscure news I will go. A-hunting for world news I will go. Everything that is in the public domain will be filched and lampooned - as is my wont - and paraded for all the world to see.

I'd invite anyone passing to send me stuff that's weird, but I already have several stalkers who routinely fill my inbox with all sorts of stuff as it is. (One of them is lovely, so don't get me wrong there. The other is a rampant bible humping Christian freak who is determined to make me change my ways. He has two chances...) Well, now that I'm in my content entering mode, it's time to see what can be done at the Rat's new spot on the e-bog. The www.timewastersanonymous.com of e-space.... oooh I wonder if that url is gone yet...

Time to go do some damage.

Well, one for the books...

I've moved my Swamp from Topica.com to Dwev.net because half the subscribers were complaining that they weren't getting my posts. Now half the subscribers are complaining that they didn't get the most recent post. (Including me, but that's usual because I haven't been getting my own stuff for months.)

I have to start being nice to a certain person because he twisted his boss's arm so I could have some (more) free web space to do something self destructive. When I put some content there, it'll be at http://chatrat.hisplace.net. Sounds almost Spanish, but it's not. It's Aussie. I'm going to be a lab-rat to see what sort of response I can generate. If it turns out to be successful, they'll offer it to other people.

I have to confess to being in awe of The Onion and Fark.com, so I think I'll do something along those lines, with the added bonus of some personal ads. You know the variety...

Man with big hands wishes to meet wealthy blind woman with big boobs...
Phone Richard Kiel on +1 212 555 TITS

It occured to me that the biggest users of the internet are women who like to chat and young males who like to play Counterstrike.

Well, I don't mind chatting, but Counterstrike bores me shitless. "Fire in the hold!" I wish it was a fire in your A drive, just quietly.

So, a-hunting for obscure news I will go. A-hunting for world news I will go. Everything that is in the public domain will be filched and lampooned - as is my wont - and paraded for all the world to see. I'd invite anyone passing to send me stuff that's weird, but I already have several stalkers who routinely fill my inbox with all sorts of stuff as it is. (One of them is lovely, so don't get me wrong there. The other is a rampant bible humping Christian freak who is determined to make me change my ways. He has two chances...)

Well, now that I'm in my content entering mode, it's time to see what can be done at the Rat's new spot on the e-bog. The www.timewastersanonymous.com of e-space.... oooh I wonder if that url is gone yet...

Time to go do some damage.

The big soccer final is this weekend. A coupla dozen limp wristed shirt-swappers are going to chase a leather balloon around a paddock in Yokohama to ascertain who can get it to the back of the net the most when it counts. Wake me when it's over.

Threatening to eclipse the big event is a turn-up in Pomgolia (Limeria, Wasp Island, England) where the classic tale of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is having to undergo nomeclative surgery in order that hunchbacks not be offended.

Political correctness takes place in the places fewer people really give a shit.

The Bell Ringer of Notre Dame is still going to be as ugly as fifty pigs and lust after the underaged Esmerelda. Poor misunderstood Quasimodo. Poor deformed, illiterate, deaf Froggy toe-rag.

If only he'd used his testicles for niceness instead of evil.

All the world is utterly fucked save thee and me, and I'm really not sure of me.

I'm blatting (blogging to you) for the first time in a month for one good reason. I've been reading Rageboy's EGR newsletters one after the other because Topica.com no longer sends me any email.

BASTARDS!

I'm missing out on all the good shit. I go there to post my newsletter and while I'm there - if I'm not busy stirring up hornets nests elsewhere - I read the efforts of Rageboy and Terry Mertens and occasionally re-read some of my own stuff. (That's why the first line of this particular bit of blattery.)

I'm suddenly aware that there is a conversation going on around me and that some pretty wired people are involved. The try hards who lurk where I stir up those hornets are just too damn ignorant of everything except their own opinions. That wouldn't worry me, but reading that crap, it becomes clear that not only are they largely incapable of stringing two sentences together, they are manifestly incapable of coherent thought.

Ho Ho Ho you say... and then I go off and read a few EGR's back to back and make blatts about incoherent thought?

Well, yeah. As it happens I do.

The difference is EGR is real in the sense that what I'm reading is what he's thinking insofar as I think he's honest enough to share his - fuck, I don't know what you'd call them - musings with us, I guess. And besides, I'm interested in Chris because he's interesting.

Now if that isn't the understatement of the year, I'll kiss his arse. Chris Locke interesting... yep. The sun is that warmish thing in the sky that keeps us from freezing to death, unless you're stranded at the South Pole in which case you'd be entitled to ask for your money back.

My idiot older brother got home from work just before. Just before midnight actually. Wandered in, went straight to his room and shut the door. Well hi, how was your day? Really? Well fuck you.

Then the ol' lady comes home. We have one of those automatic garage door jiggy boos - you know, push the button - open sesame and all that.

Well, mid open there was an emphatic sort of popping sound. I had high hopes that the thing had blown a fuse and I might get even just a couple of minutes more of peace and quiet, until I realised she'd only been inching the car forward as the door opened and she'd run over a gum nut.

So I prepared myself - I girded my loins - for the nightly diatribe of the occupational travails. Women shouldn't be allowed to work together. Seriously. They can't get along, they harbour deep resentment of one another then bring it all home to share with anyone stupid enough to even pretend to listen.

This, people, is the real reason football is televised.

But I'm spared this horror for the evening. She's picked up one of my most treasured resources - The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations. Which means I'm in for another sort of horror.

I'm trying to compile a few thoughts about the idiot brother, and she starts quoting from the damn book.
I wanna know what's currently going on with the Colorado bushfires - the Australian news has moved on to other far more mundane things, like Australian politics (Anarchists should all move to Australia where the government is rapidly fading to the status of irrelevence - even dipping occasionally into the realm of absurdity.) - I wanna know why Rageboy AND Chris Locke have stopped replying to email.

Here's the gist of it:

I want Rageboy to do a tour of Australia. I've hooked up with a smart cookie who knows all the right people and what strings to pull, but he needs something to sell to the people who pay for these things.

So, I email Chris, tell him, yeah the fee isn't the problem, it's just that over here, you're not all that well known. Less well known than you ought to be. So I need something to keep the potential sponsors interested. Comprende?

And that's not all... when I rang him up, he said he'd love to come to Australia - who wouldn't - if some rich motherfucker would pay for him to come over.

Not a problem I think. I'm on the job. Now he goes bush and won't answer his emails. So, EGR I think to find out what's been going on, since Topica seem determined to keep me in the dark, and lo and behold, he's been blogging his brains out for the last 5 weeks.

You're all to blame for this. If you weren't here, neither would he be, and I'd have got an answer to my emails.

So, there's a solution here. All of you know Rageboy. So all of you have to let him know that ChatRat has been waiting patiently for an answer to his emails about him coming to Australia.

In the meantime, as I look at the clock on my puter, I notice it's almost 2 in the morning and I really should do something about my eyeballs which appear to be sinking further into my cheekbones the more I sit at this painfully slow machine.

Would it help if I said "PLEASE"?

PLEASE!

Ok, rant over. You better check your eggs now, they're probably ashes.

Dr. Seuss explains why computers crash:

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted at a very last resort,
and the access of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash
and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash;
and your data is corrupted cause the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
but your packets want to tunnel to another protocol,
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,

And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse;
then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
'cuz sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy in the disk
and the macrocode instructions cause unnecessary risk,
then you'll have to flash the memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn the sucker off and be sure to tell your Mom!

I'm having an email competition with a delightfully witty female personage in Queensland who is trying to beat me into submission (a phrase loaded with irony if ever there was one) by sending me every punny joke in her archive.

Not to be outdone - as if I ever were...lol - I email replies to those emails with a worthy enough content, but I don't think she realises what a bastard I really am.

So, if you have any pun jokes, good, bad or otherwise, please send them ALL to me at:
Chatrat@graffiti.net for instant forwardage.

Hell, even the best ones may make it here as well.

It's such a pity that hotmail doesn't provide its users with more than a lousy few megs of space to store emails.

Who the hell is Archimedes Pancake?

Archimedes Pancake is my imaginary friend. He's about 6 or 7 at the moment and he's looking for things to do. Anyone with kids knows that they get up to some monumentally stupid stunts, I know I did, and Archimedes is no different. Except that he's run out of things to do, and I don't want him doing the things I did as a kid because those interested in the adventures of young Archimedes will know it's just me. THEREFORE, I'm hoping to get a few emails from denizens of the world wide timetrap telling me some of the amazing things they got up to when they were kids. (Or wished they had.) I'm not concerned about accuracy here, or whether they're your ideas or someone else's.

Now, there are two ways to do this: send an email to Chatrat@graffiti.net to which I will respond....
or anonymously by using form mail at:
Chatrat
just don't fill your details in the form. All I get then is an email from mayor@powow.com and that's it.

If anyone chooses the second option, I'll set up a page with the contributions so we can all have a laugh.

NB: Anything to do with sticky tape or a foul tempered cat named Abdullah will win you undying friendship and free publicity!

This world is an ever evolving and de-volving place. DwevskyX, a net-geek who rates with the best of them has a nearly fab website at http://dwev.net. It's got lovely graphics and useful things as well, it's sprinkled with humourous bits and pieces and is really quite a professional looking site. Until the end of November last year, that is. Now the site appears to be sliding into that eternal e-graveyard of unused and unloved sites that make cyberspace look like a journey back through time rather than the biggest garage sale imaginable. What's more, his mobile phone number has been disconnected and catching on the net in any chatrooms is like bumping into Elvis at a party.
Now, my idol on the world wide timetrap, Chris Locke - Rageboy, is proving to be more enigmatic than ever. Sometimes, when I'm being frivolous, I send him an email to which I often get a reply. But when I offer money - real gelt, not that Monopoly stuff - in exchange for a copy of his new book - both of them actually - he vacates cyberspace like the starship Enterprise out of the Neutral Zone. What gives?
I know what's happened!! He's eloped with DwevskyX!!! What a horrible thought! JJ, RB, I still love ya! But I'm going to get that book request to ya and a response outta ya if it's the last thing I do.
At present, I'm sitting in a cyber cafe in Prahran (Melbourne) on this Saturday, January 12 during a gay and lesbian street party which is as busy as a one armed taxi driver with crabs. (And there may just be one or two of those in the crowd.) Why? Because my arsewiping brother forbids me to use his room to get on the internet while he's home. It's my puter, my modem and my ISP, but the damn puter is in his room. Don't ask for more specific details, it involves death.
The Swamp is doing better now than it was 2 months ago. What that means is I'm posting with greater regularity but the subscriber base is still a pathetic 15 individuals. At least there are one or two I don't know personally. Interestingly enough though, someone has posted two editions of it at Mediapeak.com. Now, if you're really brave, you can go to google.com, search for Chatrat and it will give you direct access to those two newsletters. And what's more (I'm not ashamed to blow my own trumpet here) my name, Paul Ritchie, is actually in the first page of search results. I just wish I could get money for all this crap I do on the internet.
Never mind. Archimedes Pancake is still alive and well - although no submissions have yet been forthcoming from the wider community - anonymous or otherwise. So if you're feeling brave, email me at Chatrat@graffiti.net or if not, go to my humble website at www.powow.com/chatrat and use the form mail at the bottom of the page, and I just get it as Mayor@powow.com not you.
So go for it so lot's more people can get a good laugh at your misfortunes.
Also, while you're feeling charitable towards this lil Rat, subscribe to my newsletter: http://www.topica.com/lists/swamp/subscribe
It can't hurt and you may even get a laugh out of it - if you've read this far.
Lots of love and big girlie kisses on all your behinds,
Paul. (Aka ChatRat.)

Well, now that all the festivities are over, we can get back to some good old fashioned cynicism without also being a party pooper.

Who the hell is Archimedes Pancake? Ask yourself this question when next you cast your eye across a roll of sticky tape. Wouldst thou care to know more? You know you want to.

In that case, visit my website at http://www.powow.com/chatrat and e-mail me by way of the jiggy boo at the bottom of the first page. If you can't be bothered doing that, try this one out:

http://www.topica.com/lists/swamp/read and check out the last newsletter I put out earlier this week - the one with Harry Potter in the title. Why? Because this is going to give you and all your e-friends a good laugh that's why. But like all good things, it needs to be crafted and teamwork is a laudable thing, so get yer ass on the team, it'll only take you one - just one - little effort and in a few short weeks, you'll get an email which, with a bit of luck, will achieve e-legend status. I know this, I've seen others like it that were made up on the spur of the moment by a single person. Imagine a world full of surfers making contributions. That URL again: http://www.powow.com/chatrat and the newsletter: http://www.topica.com/lists/swamp/read Do yourselves a favour!