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You know what scares cats? Hail. Man, we’ve had, like, four storms pass through in the past 24 hours. I’ve never experienced thunderstorms in cool weather before.

Go the Swannies!
I attended my first Aussie Rules Football match tonight! Snookums and I headed out with our friend Smithers to Telstra Olympic Stadium to watch the Sydney Swans demolish the West Coast Eagles. I know very little about Aussie Rules, but thankfully it doesn’t seem to have as many crazy obscure infractions as rugby. Basically it’s just a bunch of really tall fit guys in short shorts jumping and kicking and running for two hours. That’s a sport I can get behind! (Plus I already knew the Swannies’ fight song, so I figured what the heck. It’s the closest I’ll get to a Notre Dame game this year.) We drank beer and ate hot dogs and tried to start the wave and cheered on Bazza and the lads… and later we huddled in the concourse trying to keep warm as the freezing cold rain poured down. Unfortunately my camera batteries died so I couldn’t get any pictures of our bedraggled selves until I got home. It was pretty fun though… Next week we take on St. Kilda! Go the Swannies!

JK Rowling has offered up a peek at two sentences from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Any guesses who they’re talking about? My wild guess is that it’s one of Harry’s grandfathers (probably the wizarding one, as I doubt it’d be Marge’s Dad).

That was a hell of a comment spam attack, huh? Assholes. Snookums and I are working on a prevention system. (Every IP address was a different open proxy.) I’m still cleaning up the aftermath. The “recent comments” list will look funny for a little while.

Tales of the Weird
I stepped out of the break room after lunch today to be confronted by the weirdest little man: he had a ratty, pointy face; he was sporting a massive comb-over; and he was wearing an extremely fluffy white angora sweater. As my eyes adjusted to the cloud of fuzziness that was his torso, I realized with amazement that it was a woman’s angora sweater. It had puffy shoulders and everything! It was like meeting a 60-year-old Ed Wood. He started mumbling to me about angora so I took him over to the case where we keep the balls. (They’re expensive so we keep ’em under glass.) He started telling me about his beloved sweater and how he bought it for five dollars at an op shop, and how it’s his fondest wish to have another knit just like it. I went to get Losh, the other manager. “Losh,” I said. “I have a complete loony over there who wants to get a 100% angora sweater knit and I don’t know what to quote him.” So she came over to deal with him. After much hemming and hawing, she quoted him a price of $700. That’s $500 for the wool and another $200 for the knitting. Seven hundred dollars for a sweater, of which we’d need 50% upfront. Undeterred, he picked out a pattern and Losh set about measuring him. Afterwards he disappeared to “go get the money.” “He’ll never come back,” I said. “He probably just wanted some attention.” Lo and behold, an hour later he was back with the deposit. I couldn’t believe it. I deal with some characters, I tell you…

Holy crap! Craigslist Sydney has finally launched! Not much there yet but hopefully it’ll grow. I was surprised to see a link about US voter registration on the home page, but the explanation was delightful: “We’re including a link to this page on our non US sites just to show that we’re working hard to restore democracy to the US.” Brilliant.

Anybody still looking for a last minute wedding gift for my sister? She’d love a genuine Ultimate Warrior WWF Championship belt, I swear. Hee. (Link courtesy of Chandler.)

Bring on the election.
I was chatting to an old grandma at the shop today and she mentioned that she was from Arizona. “Oh, nice!” I love meeting fellow Americans. (Well, the nice ones anyway.) She said she’d just been reading about the Republican National Convention in the newspaper. Not wanting to say anything too controversial – at least, not before she’d paid for her wool – I just kinda nodded and said I’d seen something about it on the news. “You know,” she said, “I’m a registered Republican but I believe in voting for the man, not the party. And I’m not voting for that man again!” I broke into a big grin. Right on, lady! Later that afternoon a woman from New York recognized my accent and blurted out that she hoped I’d registered to vote. I told her the story of the Arizona lady and she was delighted. So party on, Republicans. The more you tighten your grip, the more moderate voters will slip through your fingers…

I’m fairly certain that everybody that wants a Gmail account already has one, but if you don’t, just leave a comment. I’ve got five more invites to give out.