The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to Australia. Brilliant and hilarious and true. Australian beaches are simply the nicest and best in the entire world. Although anyone actually venturing into the sea will have to contend with sharks, stinging jellyfish, stonefish (a fish which sits on the bottom of the sea, pretends to be a rock, and has venomous barbs sticking out of its back that will kill you just from the pain) and surfboarders. However, watching a beach sunset is worth the risk of all of these. (Link courtesy of John.)

Max pointed me to an article in The New York Times that describes the frustration of the Atkins dieter having to give up his/her favorite foods. At the same time, though, this guy motivates me to continue. Yeah, it’s hard turning down homemade blueberry pie, but the results are well worth it. If you’re lucky, you can find substitutes that help reduce the cravings. Lately I’m all about the Cadbury Lite bar. It’s made with artificial sweetener and the whole bar only has, like, 5 grams of carbs. (Snookums doesn’t like the way it tastes, but I think that has more to do with it being closer to American-style milk chocolate than anything you get here.) A couple squares of that will kill any sugar craving. I’ve also found an Australian website called Picture of Health that sells low-carb products and provides a forum for dieters. It’s nice to have a support group. I’m also so grateful that Rodd is doing this along with me. I’d have given up long ago without his encouragement.

Have you got Monica Syndrome? Are you a control freak? According to this quiz, I’m “normally in control”, but when I lose it, I “lose it big-time”. Yeah, I’d probably agree with that.

Tonight’s gym torture session was Body Combat, an “empowering” workout that “combines powerhouse moves and stances developed from a range of self-defence disciplines including Karate, kickboxing, Tai Chi and Tae Kwondo, into a ‘take no prisoners’, adrenaline-pumping routine.” Sounds exciting, right? I was pumped. I thought I was gonna be Jean-Claude Van Damme. Instead, as usual, I found myself huffing, puffing, and struggling just to stay on my feet. The combinations weren’t that hard to master and the instructor was really nice, but the relentless pace was just too much. The punching and kicking were actually pretty cool; it was the constant bouncing and shuffling that killed me. Plus I made the mistake of looking in the mirror while I was jabbing away, which revealed the unhappy truth that though I was Jean-Claude in my head, in reality I was a red-faced chunker who punches like a girl. Needless to say, I will not be sending in my entry to the Ultimate Fighting Championships anytime soon.

Oh, and it didn’t help that Satomi Tiger was in the class. (That’s my nickname for her. Anybody get the reference?) She’s this weird little Asian girl with no rhythm who just bops away in the corner the whole time. She’s crazy, but she’s also got ten times the energy I have. She’s like a cartoon character. I hate Satomi Tiger.

New Poll: One thing we’ve been really missing on this Atkins diet is crunchiness. It’s just hard to get a satisfying crunch that doesn’t involved flour or potatoes or carbs at some point. The Snook has been researching though and has come up with a solution: pork rinds. Not only can we eat them as snacks, he says, but we can also crush them up and use them as breading. He’s even found a recipe that uses them to make french toast. I have no idea how that works, and quite frankly, I don’t want to know. I’m pretty much anti-pork-rind myself. The whole concept just reminds me of those dried pig ears you buy for dogs at the pet store. *shudder* Come on, back me up here.

Friday Five:
Random answers today. These are deep questions and I haven’t had any coffee.

1. What is your current occupation? Is this what you chose to be doing at this point in your life? Why or why not?
I’m doing web development contracting from home right now. I just sort of fell into this work during college, mostly because it made more money than anything else I might do. I do enjoy the work, but I hate the industry. I have ethical problems with the way “consultancy” works in practice, like charging the client extra for something frivolous that they should’ve been talked out of in the first place. It’s hard. It can also be pretty soul-destroying to put all your effort into a pointless site that dies six months later. When a carpenter builds something or a teacher instructs somebody, the results of their work matter. Not much of what we do in this industry matters. I don’t want to do this forever.

2. If time/talent/money were no object, what would your dream occupation be?
Being famous. I’d be a general all-purpose celebrity. I’d get paid to work on my websites, and I’d probably host some sort of TV show too. I might even be in some movies. It’s ridiculous some of the people that are on TV these days. I’d be better than 90% of them. I am completely and utterly serious.

3. What did/do your parents do for a living? Has this had any influence on your career choices?
They both started out working in manufacturing but eventually wound up in white-collar desk jobs. My mom is a computer systems administrator (and webmaster), and my dad is the manager in charge of service at an RV dealership. I guess Mom’s job had more influence on me, since she was always bringing home computers and that’s how I got involved with them. At the same time, her tales of office bureaucracy and politics pretty much convinced me that this isn’t what I want to do long-term.

4. Have you ever had to choose between having a career and having a family?
Nope. That’s one of the advantages of being a completely self-absorbed Generation Xer. 🙂

5. In your opinion, what is the easiest job in the world? What is the hardest? Why?
What a random question. Shall I be all philosophical? The easiest is one that you love, the hardest is one that you have to force yourself to do. In my own case, the hardest is whatever job I currently have, and the easiest is whatever job I currently want.

Wow. Who would’ve predicted that Indiana of all places would be at the forefront of the gay marriage debate?

The Slashdot Meetup last night was pretty fun. We had about 12 people show up, including another girl (for a total of three!). The venue, Establishment Bar, pretty much sucked though. It was this big posh city place full of suits and loud music. We waited there for about an hour and then headed around the corner for some Thai food. We finished the night off in one of the George Street video arcades watching Slashdotter Chris work his Dance Dance Revolution magic. It was amazing; he was playing in “double” mode where you dance across both platforms hitting all eight arrows. I would’ve given it a try, but my experience in Step class has soured me for rhythmic athletic enterprises for life. So instead Snookums and I raced on Harleys. Like I said, fun night.

I’m playing around with some new software called Kung Tunes. It uploads the details of whatever current mp3 is playing in iTunes to the site. You can see it down on the right under “listening”.

Recent Pop Culture Ingestions:
I just finished reading Douglas Coupland‘s latest novel All Families Are Psychotic. (Hmm. It appears it hasn’t come out in paperback in the US yet. Weird.) I haven’t liked his last couple of books and this one sure didn’t impress me at the start. It just struck me as too wacky and gimmicky, like Dave Barry’s Big Trouble (which I hated). Things just get more and more farcical. Eventually I just gave in and accepted it, and that’s when it got a lot more fun. By the end I was having a good time. It doesn’t have the emotional weight of Microserfs, but it made me laugh a couple of times. I thought the whole “Princess Diana” bit was random, but I did like the resolution of it.

The Buffy Series 4 DVD has been out for ages in the UK, but we still haven’t procured a copy. (The exchange rate makes UK stuff very expensive for us.) It’s out here in Australia, but it’s not in the cool little “book” format. Instead you have to buy two huge boxes, each with several separate DVDs (in separate cases) in them. That, of course, just wouldn’t “go” with the rest of our collection. So we remain in limbo, not sure whether to shell out for the nice version or suck it up and go with the crap one. (Waiting ages for the US version to come out is out of the question.) I’ve been suffering Buffy withdrawal, though, so I caved and rented the first disc of Series 4 and last night we watched the first episode, “The Freshman”. I wasn’t happy. Why is it that Buffy gets totally shit upon in the first episode of every season? Willow was a jerk to her, Giles blew her off, and her Mom was less than sympathetic. I did like Xander’s little “What would Buffy do?” speech, but hello? What happened to character continuity? Xander was an ass all of Season 3. Now suddenly he’s not an ass anymore? And Willow went from nerdy computer girl to sexy trendy Wicca over the course of one summer? I don’t buy it. I’m hoping that the entire episode was constructed to make you feel Buffy’s sense of alienation and discombobulation, because that’s how I felt. Otherwise it sucked and I really hope it gets better soon. (Also, the random phone call bothered me until I read that it was the first Angel crossover event. Great. Now I’ve gotta rent those too.)

After the Buffy disappointment, we watched Wim Wenders’s film Wings of Desire. You may have seen its much crappier and cheesier “remake” City of Angels. Wenders’s version is much better, but it’s also pretty challenging. Not a lot happens. Parts are in monochrome and parts in color. Dialogue is in German, English, and French, so there are a lot of subtitles. There are random appearances by Peter Falk and Nick Cave. To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about it. Ebert makes some good points in his review, and while I can appreciate it artistically, it’s not the kind of thing I really enjoy myself. At any rate, it’s worth seeing just to realize how completely crap the Nicholas Cage/Meg Ryan version is.