Sikamikanico Blogs

The best of the web, fresh every Friday (it always comes around so fast) As I'm now spending alot of time surfing blogs on BlogMad , here's some of the most amusing stuff I've come across this week: A message to the cats and dogs - very cute. If you have problems picking what to wear to work, spare a thought for this person (I'm not sure if they are male or female, and it probably doesn't matter) From Antoine Khater: A few chuckles The Laws of the Universe There's some great pics here at Laughing Machine ~~~~~ Scott Adams rarely gets it as wrong as he does here, saying that complainers rarely mate with other complainers . As someone who likes to engage in a fun spat of "No, I had the Worst Day Ever!" with a partner, I can say that this isn't exactly true. I've featured him in the follies before, but I have to do it again. Like so much else he writes, Bugs Butt's post about his new watch had tears of laughter running down my face. Since

I knew I was attached to my routines (well, actually just the one routine, that is my life) but didn't realise until this morning that it was to such a ridiculous extent... The bus to work broke down about 2km away from the office. Figuring that I'd have trouble getting on another one, as they're very crowded along that stretch of road, I phoned one of the guys at the office and got them to pick me up. They were along shortly, and I arrived on time. But...that was slight deviation from the usual, i.e. not getting off the bus at the stop near the office, has unsettled me to the extent that by not having started the day in the normal way, the entire rest of the day doesn't feel right. Yes, I am incredibly attached to my routine, I'm sure it must be a form of OCD, and maybe I should seek help about it. But...I've lived such a chaotic life, the fact that things are so regulated and ordered now - an order I have imposed upon myself - means all is well . After all, if

Okay, we've all seen those email lists with the signs to watch out for. The one that seems especially apt to me is: Sure, you have more money, but everything you want to buy costs between $200 and $300. To which I would add: You can finally afford all those things you've always wanted...but now, you are too old for them. When I was a young Goth (I don't think I was ever a Baby Goth really, though some may disagree) I used to suffer from terrible shopping envy. There were so many cool things in the shops I wanted, and as an instant-noodle-eating, op-shop-dressing student, I couldn't afford any of them. Fast forward all these years, and I can afford to buy most things I want. Well, on Saturday, wandering through the shops in Newcastle, what I wanted was the Emily the Strange flight bag I saw in Hot Property, you can see why... So I bought it. (It cost a lot less than between $200 and $300, by the way). And I'm glad I did. It's roomy, it's covered in velvet,

Well, it's now been a few weeks since I did my major template overhaul. And the reactions have been...mixed. Whilst some people say that they like the new clean look of the blog, others feel that it's lost its character, and a few people have said that the links in the drop down menus don't work for them. So...although I'm quite happy with the blog as it is now, I've saved my old template, and will re-instate it if enough people think I should. Leave any and all opinions about whether the blog should keep it's new look or go back to the old one in the comments, and I'll make a decision (if one needs to be made!) in the next few days... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I'm of two minds about Blog Mad . Whilst it's been - by far - the best referral service I've ever used, sending my visitor stats into the stratosphere, I really don't know how many of those people actually properly look at the blogs, or if they are just surfing at random to get their own credits

(Why do I always hear the theme music from the Muppet Show in my head as I type those words?) BBC news says Goths may be in fact upwardly gothic ... Unlike this abandoned blog , I've followed through on my blog promises. Suspicious of all "sporting personalities" who "write books"? Well, you should be . It's such a guilty blogging pleasure... The Kip's list is most amusing, though I disagree with almost everything he says. From the Onion: I'm terrified of the day when a cow-orker accidentally stumbles across my blog, but this is worse . Also, why can't this happen to me? (HINT) Ever been head hunted ? This way would be preferable. You know this day will come Actually, it's not just these ones , all obits are weird (I hope I don't die at work. Then my obituary would read "She died doing what she hated"). Well, that's it for another week. If you've got a few seconds (and assuming you liked this), you could vote for this

You tell me that you love me so, you tell me that you care, but when I need you, Blogger, you're never there! Yep, Blogger is still having it's problems. The situation at the moment is basically, you take your chances when you want to post...sometimes it will publish, and sometimes it won't. I must say I've become addicted to the Blogger support group; whenever I see someone with a problem, I want to be the one to fix it! Normally, I'm a fairly modest, even timid, sort of a person. But every year at about this time, I turn into a psycho hose beast. That's because it's the mad season at work, where we are all rushing to meet THE DEADLINE, and the extreme stress gets to everyone. Some of us react by becoming tense, or exhausted, but not me. I develop an explosive violent temper, and it carries through to all factes of my life. I snap at shop assistants. I hurl abuse at the TV (okay, I always do that). Yesterday I threw a coffee cup across my kitchen in frustr

Well, the superlatives are already being bandied about..."worse than Cyclone Tracy", "the most ferocious storm in decades"...but I suppose that if you were directly affected, all that matters is how you saw it...Cyclone Larry, which battered far north Queensland yesterday (Australian time). Rather than publishing many different links, for the latest news, as ever ABC news is the best source... here you will find updates, photogalleries and videos. To give some idea of the damage the cyclone caused... A lamp post bent over by the storm An aerial view of damaged shop roofs A shot taken at the height of the storm Damage along a roadside in Innisfail Although it was a category five storm, the same strength as Hurricane Katrina, miraculously no one was seriously injured or killed. It has already been pointed out that comparisons cannot really be drawn with Katrina; Cyclone Larry hit a sparsely populated area which has a well known history of cyclones; buildings are co

No, actually what I mean is - can I pay for this? Blogger is free, and doesn't have a paid or premium option. But I'd gladly pay a reasonable monthly fee, in order to have some tech support - or at least, to not have the publishing problems everyone on Blogger is suffering lately. Friday afternoon was a classic example - no blogs would publish, and there was no word on what the problem was and when it would be fixed (this is why I couldn't publish the Follies). If it wasn't for the Blogger help group I think I'd go spare - deprived of any official support, all the bloggers function as support for each other (I've even been able to offer some advice of my own...I hope I haven't killed anyone's template!) ~~~~~ When will daylight savings time be over? I don't care if there are good reasons for it , they sound a bit shifty to me. I hate having to get up when it's dark, it isn't right. Anyway, how much power is really being saved, since when I

(NOTE: This should, of course, have been posted on Friday afternoon. But Blogger was having an outage at the time, then I had template problems, and I won't bore you with the details, but it's now Monday morning, so here is a rather slimmed-down, belated Follies. We'll do better this week!) This week's Follies is dedicated to those saintly souls, the bloggers. And our picks for this week... Bugs Butt is king of the bullet points , and damn funny too. People Are Idiots...and you wouldn't believe their Bushit . Proving that writing can be tough , Scott Adams gets it right again. Remember Tim, the skinny leftie who almost won Big Brother '05? Here he takes on Stan Zemanek .

(WARNING: This post contains grossly un-PC content which will probably be offensive to anyone with any taste. Come back tomorrow) Last night when I was watching the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony (only whilst skipping between channels) I entertained myself with an evil little fantasy. As each team entered the stadium, via the ramp, I noticed the wheelchair athletes were being wheeled in at the front of the group ( see photo ). Anyway...I wondered what would happen if one of the team officials pushing a wheelchair lost their grip, sending chair and althlete hurtling down the ramp into the team in front. Well, for a start you would hear the loudest cry of "OH SHIT!" in the history of humanity. If there's a hell...

Well, the Pod has been running for a very long time now. There's been over 400 posts, and over 12,000 visitors in that time. It's been great fun, but lately I've realised that I have a problem: I am running out of things to say. There are of course blogs which have been going for more than five years, and I wonder - how do they do it? Of course, it helps if your blog has a theme, like Omni's great blog on the theories of the universe, or the political diary of Senator Andrew Bartlett , or a photo journal like Sydney Photo . But I just crap on about myself, post after post, month after month...and now edging into year after year. Since my life doesn't change very much, exciting events being few and far between, this means that - as happens in Cosmopolitan , where the same basic articles are repeated year in, year out, with slightly different titles - there seems to be a set of posts which I repeat, with slight variations, over and over. In fact, I've been thinki

Well, on Friday evening Boof, Funky and myself finally did the whole "dress up and go out to dinner" thing that was purely an excuse for me to wear the so-unlike-me outfit which they pressured me into buying in the first place. We made a dinner reservation at Mangrove Jacks, one of the new restaurants in the "marina precinct", and after several hours with the polyfilla, I had my make up done. It had been so long since I actually put on any make-up that I followed a magazine's make-up guide, for the first time in over ten years (it was the "femme face" from the March Marie Claire , for those of you playing at home), and I think the results turned out rather well. But then came the moment of truth...putting the dress on. I don't remember it being so low-cut when I bought it! So low cut in fact, that I couldn't even wear a stick on bra. Honestly, I've been engaged to guys who've seen less of my clevage than what I displayed to all and sund

Holding the belief that anyone who's made it through to Friday deserves a laugh, I'm introducing a new regular feature...every Friday (well, almost every Friday) Xander and Nico will bring you a collection of the best and funniest links of the week. Enjoy our premiere selection. From The Onion: 'Iraqi Ghandi' preaches slightly less violence From The Chaser: Bert's Family Feud re-ignites euthanasia debate For the best in travel guides, check out Jetlag Travel (the senior's travel guide is especially apt) See Uncyclopedia entries for Live Journal , Bloggers and their parody of myspace (which is, layout aside, actually pretty much indistinguishable from a real myspace) There'd be more links, but I don't want to overdo it for a first time (I bet most of the ones I've got don't get followed anyway, she mutters). ~~~~~ Here's how fuzzy work is making my brain: Boof rang through on my office number, and I didn't recognise his voice at first

Well, as I've been saying, the time has come to give my blog a whole new look. It was a hard decision to make; I've had the exact same blog template since I started here on blogger, oh-so-long-ago. I knew exactly nothing about HTML back then, and by the time I'd learnt enough HTML to make a few changes, my blog had been the same for so long I thought, even if it looks rather boring, and messy, that's this blog's look! (Well, I did study marketing at uni, so I know something about branding - and not the cool, body mod kind of branding. The product identity kind). But now, after more than two years and 400 posts, I've bitten the bullet and given the pod a total revamp. For better or for worse, here it is (I'm particularly fond of the drop down menus. And you'd better appreciate them, because they took a long time to make ). There's still a few tweeks here and there I want to make to get everything "just so" - actually, my whole life seems to

You be the judge... ~~~~~ I'll be doing my major blog overhaul this week, as well as adding lots more photos to the gallery. But since I missed work on Friday I've got so much to catch up on (you'd think someone could have done some of it for me, I do for them when they are away) so it might take a little while. Eek, I'm nervous! I hate change!

Ten years. Ten long years of the Howard Government. Un-flippin-believable. As for the man himself, Howard says it's just another day in office. I think that may be the saddest thing of all. I remember watching the election night coverage on March 2 1996. I didn't vote that day; I was still only 16 (and that annoyed me. I understood and cared about the whole process, which is more than a lot of voting-age people do. The voting age should be lowered to 16, and compulsory voting should be scrapped) but I was concerned and upset. I didn't like the Liberals, I didn't like what they stood for and all I knew was Labor government, which seemed pretty good - why change it? That night I wrote about in my diary how much I regretted the whole thing. But I think the turning point came for me a few months later, in a conversation with my mother. She was discussing how annoyed she was that the local Medicare office had closed, and of the creation of Centrelink; I reflected on cuts to

Looking back over the meager proportion of 2006 which has passed so far - which is an even more futile exercise than you'd think, because two months at my age feels like it goes past the way four days did when I was 19 - I have to admit that this year doesn't seem to be going very well. It's not that anything terrible has happened, but nothing very good has happened either. Most of the plans I've made for better things have fallen through, and I must admit I'm starting to get...well, I wouldn't say depressed exactly, I'm not depressed, but weighed down, worn out, slightly heartsick - yes. It's just the grind of work and day to day life, which is never relieved by anything fun or exciting. It's turning me into Chandler , from the early days of Friends , such as on Tuesday morning when I thought to myself, "Well, it's raining, and I'm standing on an overcrowded bus, on my way to an another exhausting day at the office. Does it get better