The Snook and I headed into Newtown again tonight to say goodbye to a Sydney institution: Alex Cordobe’s Pizza. After 32 years of serving up the best pies in the city, Dobe’s is no more. The place was packed but the food was as good as ever. Snookums had the ham, pineapple, and olives, while I had the searingly-hot Mexican. We drank beers and toasted the passing of an institution. At the end of the night the waiters dragged Dennis (the current owner) out from behind the counter and doused him with champagne. Fare thee well, pizza man.

Interestingly, I got a waiter to confess that “Alex Cordobe” doesn’t exist. They picked it off a poster of a bullfighter.

Final call for Oscar Contest entries!
We’ve had over 400 entries this year. Holy crap. I’m going to close the voting when I get up in the morning, which should be about five hours before the show starts. So if you haven’t entered yet, do it NOW! A sock monkey hangs in the balance. (I’m going to do second and third prizes as well since there are so many entries.)

If you’d like to see how the tally is progressing throughout the show, bookmark this page. I’ll be updating the award winners in real time (well, as quickly as I can get them off the web) and the scores will update immediately. As you can see, there’s currently a 400-way tie for first. 🙂

Oh, and if you’re going to be taping the show (or watching it near a computer), I’d love it if you could e-mail me the number of dead people in the obituary tribute montage. I’ve had a couple of volunteers already but it never hurts to double-check!

Good luck, everybody!

The Snook and I want a cat. Unfortunately I haven’t had one since I was little and the Snook’s only familiar with outdoor farm cats, so this morning I headed to the bookstore to buy a cat owner’s manual. I stood there looking through the pet section for ages. There were lots of books on dogs, lots on fish, several on birds, several on random pets like ferrets and bunnies, but only a tiny handful on cats. It amused me to see “Dogs for Dummies” and “The Idiot’s Guide to Budgies” and “Rabbits for Dummies” and “The Idiot’s Guide to Sharks”, while there wasn’t a single “Dummy” book in the cat section. I take this to mean that cat owners are just naturally more intelligent. Anyway, I got one and we’re reading through it. Cat ownership, here we come!

Finally, a visitor!
After two long years in Australia, a member of my family has finally come to visit. My cousin Tony is here for the semester studying in Wollongong (just south of Sydney) and came up to see us this weekend. Here I am with him and his girlfriend Molly. We took them out for a traditional Newtown evening of cocktails, beers, and Japanese food. I managed to goad them into eating sushi and octopus! It was pretty darn fun.

I tried to read through Orson Scott Card’s thoughts on same-sex marriage and I couldn’t even get through it. The sheer stupidity… He honestly tries to argue that gays who marry are stealing something from his own marriage. He thinks that loving couples who want to get married are somehow weakening the institution (along with divorce and single parents). It made me feel ill. You know, I loved Ender’s Game and all, but his personal views are really starting to color my opinion of his work – and not in a good way.

A Californian’s Conception of the United States. Heh.

Don’t forget, ladies! This Sunday is the one day every four years when tradition says you can propose to your man. If he says no, he still has to give you a kiss, a rose, and a pair of gloves. Pretty sweet, huh? I may just try it – my recent irritation with the institution notwithstanding – just to score some free swag from the Snook. 🙂

The 10 Strangest Toys of 2004. I actually think that “Root-Vue Farm” thing is kinda cool. Oh no, I’ve become a gardening geek!

By the way, I just noticed that Amazon has made an update to their Wishlist features: You can now specify the priority level on any item on your list. You can also sort by priority. It’s kinda fun going through and rating how much you want everything. The only annoying thing is that you can’t go through the whole page changing priorities and save them all; you have to change one, hit the button, let the page refresh, and do it all over again. But fun…

There is an Australian-themed restaurant in Portland, Oregon… called Wanker’s Corner. Seriously.