Books I've read in 2010:

Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
After Dark - Haruki Murakami
Being of the Field - Traci Harding
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Sacred Hearts - Sarah Dunant

Tidied up my flist a little. Have to listen to enough crap from real life people, don't want to read crap on my flist as well.

Books I've read in 2009:

The Messenger - Marcus Zusak
Playing the Game - Belle de Jour
Blindness - Jose Saramago
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez
The Pyramid - Henning Mankell
The Last Albatross - Ian Irvine
Blood of Elves - Andrzej Sapowski
The Tenko Club - Elizabeth Noble
Alphabet Weekend - Elizabeth Noble
Baby Proof - Emily Griffin
Year of Wonders - Geraldine Brooks
The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas
Handle With Care - Jodi Picoult
Millionaire Float - Kirsty Brooks
The Vodka Dialogues - Kirsty Brooks
Confessions of a Shopaholic - Sophie Kinsella
Edge of Reason - Helen Fielding
Fruits Basket Vol. 1 - Natsuki Takaya
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Shopaholic Abroad - Sophie Kinsella
The Cosmic Puppets - Philip K. Dick
The Game-Players of Titan - Philip K. Dick
Shopaholic Ties The Knots - Sophie Kinsella
Shopaholic & Sister - Sophie Kinsella
Shopaholic & Baby - Sophie Kinsella
The Zookeeper's War - Steven Conte
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
Her Fearful Symmetry - Audrey Niffenegger
Elsewhere - Gabrielle Zevin
Listen - Kate Veitch

It's taken me a while, but it occurred to me the other day that my friends page has been moving really slowly for the last couple of weeks. Today, I found out why: I have been removed from the adult adiml community. Why, you may ask? Well, it wouldn't be hard in that community - the moderator is like a woman with a perpetually raging case of PMS - but it wasn't something I did. It was, rather, something I didn't do. I didn't post a picture of myself having a bath or shower. Yes, that's right.

See, the moderator of the community, despite acting like a seriously pissed-off female, is actually a dude. A dude that has somehow managed to get a fair amount of people to fangirl him and, as such, want to show him their boobs. In the community, there were weekly themes, as well as "instant challenges". More often than not, they involved nudity. Even if the theme itself didn't specifically mention nudity, he would often do instant challenges such as "Post a photo of what you're wearing RIGHT NOW (and if you're not wearing anything, well that's fine lolololol". We had to vote on the weekly themes, and there was usually always a nude option. There was a scavenger photo hunt recently, and one of the items to "collect" was boobs. Getting the picture?

Anyhow, I had been voting for stuff I wanted to participate in, and I had never selected any of the nude ones. However, the last one I voted for was different to usual - instead of there being about 5 options, there were only 2: Taking a picture of yourself in the bath/shower, or your pet peeve. They were both shit, in my opinion, but I chose the bath/shower one. And yes, I had no intention of posting a photo of myself bathing on the internet, but you know what? Neither did the fucking moderator. Anyhow, after making people vote and seeing the bath item win, the moderator then backtracked and said he thought no one would choose it, and made the weekly theme BOTH of them. Then he posted and said he would be removing people from the community who voted for the bath/shower item and did not participate. I really hope he removed himself from the community as well, but that's wishful thinking.

I was toying with the idea of leaving the community anyway, because of his attitude toward the members, but I wanted to stay because of the photos. You have no idea how much of a douche this guy is - he gives people the option of saying they don't like the community, or an idea of his, but if you dare select that option he singles you out and ridicules you for it. If you dare to ask a question or want to clarify something HE thinks is simple, he'll do the same. He's kicked people from the community for asking questions like "Why do you give us an option to give you feedback if you don't want to hear it?" and "This scavenger hunt item is a little difficult for a lot of us, could we have a different option?". Seriously.

So, bobbysan - you can go and fuck yourself, you sleazebag hypocrite cockface, and have a cry about yet another person insulting you on the internet.

Anyone else know of any similar communities I can join that aren't run by a tyrannical cockmunch?

Got a new haircut today - it was time for a change.

Millipede!

It would appear that Luke has eaten my bacon. I mean, technically it wasn't exclusively my bacon, but that doesn't matter.

This can't come to South Australia soon enough, if you ask me. Although it probably won't work, it's a step in the right direction.

Books I've read in 2008:

In My Skin - Kate Holden
Belonging - Sameem Ali
Daddy's Little Earner - Maria Landon
The Golden Compass - Phillip Pullman
King of the Murgos - David Eddings
Domes of Fire - David Eddings
The Shining Ones - David Eddings
The Hidden City - David Eddings
Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Guardian of the West - David Eddings
Hotel Babylon - Anonymous
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
My Booky Wook - Russell Brand
Kennedy's Brain - Henning Mankell
The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris
The Danish Girl - David Ebershoff
Well Done, Those Men - Barry Heard
The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
The Days of Judy B - Rose Heiney
Me, Myself & Prague - Rachel Weiss
Stasiland - Anna Funder
Sorceress of Darshiva - David Eddings
Just For Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary - Linus Torvalds & David Diamond
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
Speaker For The Dead - Orson Scott Card
Seeress of Kell - David Eddings
The Best Thing - Margo Lanagan
Belgarath The Sorceror - David Eddings
Touching Earth Lightly - Margo Lanagan
Polgara The Sorceress - David Eddings

Leave me a comment and I will reply with why I like you. If I don't know you, I'll either make something up or tell you why I like your LiveJournal. You must pay for the privilege by posting a message like this one on your LiveJournal.

This is an update to my previous post:

I escalated my Paypal dispute to a claim after I worked out that the tracking number was definitely dodgy. This morning, I received many emails from the seller - isn't it funny how they start contacting you as soon as you make a claim?

Anyhow, they said that the item could take 21 business days to get to me (and here I'm wondering just how they sent it? Carrier pigeon?), and that they want me to close my Paypal claim and deal with them directly. They also admitted the tracking number is fake, and that the method of shipping they chose doesn't have a tracking number.

They also updated the Unpaid Item Dispute with Ebay, saying that apparently when I dispute the transaction with Paypal, it reverses my payment and puts it on hold, so they class me and not having paid, which is ridiculous as far as I'm concerned.

They sent all these emails to my non-Paypal email address, by the way. Will Paypal be interested in them at all? I feel with them admitting that the tracking number is bogus, AND asking me to close the claim I should be passing it on to someone. Any advice? I've never had to deal with a seller like this before.

The Barr Smith library.

Ok guys - a great girl on my flist, by the name of cerealjoe (obviously not her real name - her name is Gali) is running a campaign to be an International Neutral Entity on the LJ Advisory Board. She needs 100 people to vouch for her by the 14th of May, and she doesn't have that many friends on her flist (but come on, who does?).

I think she'd be a great candidate because she's passionate about LJ, and is articulate and intelligent. However, if you don't want to take my word for it or want to find out more about her and her views, you can go here. That should give you a bit of background on her, and I believe she is making a post in the next couple of days with her opinions about what she believes are the big issues:

- LJ unjustified account purge (because of the interests listed, etc.)
- no more "basic" accounts
- sponsoring of the site (both for the accounts and the main page in general)
- problem resolution (LJ abuse team and other problems, mainly breast-feeding icons)
- technical problems (frustration with the comments emailing system, overall site presentation)

If you're not interested, no worries, but I thought I'd spread the word.

As promised, here is the gift I got from my secret LJ-er.

1. Kirsty is....
2. Kirsty reminds me of....
3. Sometimes Kirsty....
4. If I had to spend one day with Kirsty we would....
5. One bad thing about Kirsty is....
6. One great thing about Kirsty is....
7. Without Kirsty the world would be....
8. One day Kirsty will....
9. Kirsty loves....
10. Repost this in your journal so your friends can say how much they love you - or don't.

Regional words from Adelaide/South Australia:


1. A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks: Creek

2. What the thing you push around the grocery store is called: Trolley

3. A metal container to carry a meal in: Lunchbox

4. The thing that you cook bacon and eggs in: Frypan

5. The piece of furniture that seats three people: Couch/sofa

6. The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof: Gutter

7. The covered area outside a house where people sit in the evening: Pergola

8. Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages: Softdrinks

9. A flat, round breakfast food served with syrup: Pancake.

10. A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself: Sub.

11. The piece of clothing worn by men at the beach: Budgie Smugglers/Speedos

12. Shoes worn for sports: Sneakers

13. Putting a room in order: Cleaning

14. A flying insect that glows in the dark: Firefly

15. The little insect that curls up into a ball: Millipede

16. The children's playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goes up while the other sits on the other side and goes down: See-saw

17. How do you eat your pizza?: I eat it pointy end first, after picking off any bits I don't like (balls of "meat", usually), then I eat the crust.

18. What's it called when private citizens put up signs and sell their used stuff?: A garage sale.

19. What's the evening meal?: Tea

20. The thing under a house where the furnace and perhaps a rec room are?: I'm going to guess a basement.

21. What do you call the thing that you can get water out of to drink in public places?: Water fountain.

I did another day in my life yesterday. I took a shitload of photos, because we went to the zoo and nothing's better to try out your new camera on than animals, right? Right.

( Cut for the dial-up users )

EDIT: Christ, I posted this in adayinmylife at the same time I posted this, only that entry was different - smaller, for one and with slightly different comments. At any rate, to do both these entries took me an hour. I post it, go to check that the cut worked, realised it didn't, clicked to edit it, and it was already deleted. Just like that. No warning, no nothing. It wouldn't have even been 30 seconds since I posted it. Bit rude, in my opinion.

OMFG. I just poured myself a glass of soda water and drank from it in a huge gulp in the dark, and then when I got back to my desk I realised the glass had ants in it. I just drank a gulp of soda water+drowned ants. I think I might be sick.