Posts by Rich Lock
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Why don't we just bring in free euthanasia for ill-groomed white trash? They can't offend our delicate sensibilities if they're decomposing in a landfill somewhere.
Oh, come on Craig. You know as well as I do that as this scheme would be run under a mutually-beneficial PPP arrangement, management would have an obligation to the shareholders to recoup as much of the cost as possible. Why let them rot in a landfill when they could be usefully recycled?
Pedigree Chum is people!
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The Great Point Chev Wine Scandal of '09.
Maybe we could call it 'Winebox'? Or is that one already taken? I'm sure the other one wasn't too important. Winegate?
WRT Iraq
I don't know whether I've much to say beyond "Bugger" and "Holy crap"
Seconded. although I'm sure the republican candidate for New Orleans will be along shortly to explain why we're wrong (Candyman, Candyman, Cand......).
That's one seriously shady outfit
One thing recently that actually really disconcerted me about Blackwater was when I found out they were building their own airforce. That's kinda major.
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We have friends in hand built pole houses and 1/2 round barn conversions(with views to die for to boot) and they wouldn't consider any number big enough to sell. We had an idea once to sell but the more your house becomes your home, the more difficult it is to go.When I realized that the hard slog my other 1/2 put into this place was not just a reno,it was from his heart, it then became a bigger part of us. Neither of us plan to go anywhere in any hurry. We know we would make money to sell but what for? To walk away to do it somewhere else? To change town? To do it again?To buy up? I considered that seriously and couldn't find a health benefit so couldn't see the point. Home sweet home.:)
For me, that pretty much hits the nail on the head. Every time an advert/newspaper article/home renovation TV programme/colleague refers to the place you live as an 'investment', or 'looking after their biggest assest', or some other phrasing that doesn't include the word HOME, I feel my blood pressure steadily begin to climb towards the red zone.
We bought our place because we wanted to LIVE IN IT. We locked in for five years because we wanted some certainty about exactly how much was going to disappear from the bank account every fortnight. As it happens, the decision to lock in for five years has been paying off for the last four years. And now that it isn't, I can't really muster the energy to give a stuff - a fixed cash amount went out last month and the month before that, a fixed cash amount will go out next month and the month after that. And we'll still be living in our HOME.
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Way to go, T.
Yes, I've got really mixed feelings about mr Ice-T. On the one hand, a large number of stonking tunes with general anti-'thug life' sentiments. And on the other, a bucketful of casual misogeny.
I've got more of a problem with Tipper Gore and the PRMC for the problems she caused whiteboy music (punk labels like Alternative Tentacles, for example). A casual read through the PRMC article on wikipedia lists far more rock bands than it does hip-hop artists.
Still, I'm off to turn up the bass on 'It takes a nation of millions...'. Now there's a black group that all us guilty white liberals can get behind!
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Whenever I am selling something collectable it goes on ebay US without a thought.
The only site to sell 'proper' stuff (that you can mail).As for shipping from the US - it's not that much if you know your postal shizz.
Likewise from here to there.It sounds like you are mostly selling, and mostly fairly compact lightweight items. If that's a correct assumption, then I suspect it makes a difference.
I am almost exclusively buying, and most of the objects I look at are generally fairly heavy and bulky (e.g. auto parts). On a lot of US Ebay auctions, they specifically state 'will not ship overseas and don't bother asking' (or similar). It gets a bit wearing after a while.
In one way it's understandable. I've tried to sell some stuff on TM without success that I've seen snapped up in the US on Ebay. Because the items are fiarly bulky, I really, really don't want to faff around with packaging and posting to the US. And why would someone over there buy it from NZ when they can get it locally?
Like I said originally, the market over here is just that little bit too small to sustain a good turnover of some specialist interest items. Australian Ebay seems to be the same
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I'd suggest 'Weaveworld'
Hmm, good point. The other Clive Barker I've read is 'Sacrament'.
As 'Weaveworld' is probably his most well-known, I really should give it a go. It's been on the must-get-round-to-reading-that-sometime list ever since a friend explained the plot to me while I was viewing reality from a different plane of reference (euphemistically speaking....).
And back to 'Watchmen': I've just stumbled across the trailer on flicks.co.nz while looking for a local cinema release date, and MILD SPOILER WARNING there are two reference to nukes - one explicit (we see a mushroom cloud) and one slightly more implied (a character says 'nuke' just before there is a cut to a large explosion in a city centre).
Looks pretty good, actually. I don't really have the same problem with '300' that a lot of people do. Given that Zach Snyder has explicitly stated that part of his film inspiration/motiviation was 'The 300 Spartans' (a 1960's anti-commie film), I took it more or less at face value. Yes, it's a stylised fantasy, but Spartan culture was pretty damn bleak and unforgiving. In tone, if not reality, I think it probably got that across pretty well. I mean, would you like to live like that?
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The eBay interface is awful!
Not that bad, in my opinion. The TM interface is certainly better in most respects, but there are certain things about the Ebay interface that I think are better.
The biggest problem I have with Ebay is that the NZ/AU market is too small and too far away from the US and Europe to have a decent local turnover of the more specialist items that I browse for, which are far more readiliy for sale in the US. A lot of US sellers will only ship inside the US, and if they ship outside the US, the shipping charges are generally horrendous. That won't change any time soon.
However, one of the reasons US sellers only ship inside the US is to avoid scams. What we might see changing if Ebay goes live in NZ (and local users start getting a decent amount of positive feedback) is O/S sellers being more willing to ship to a more demonstrably trustworthy buyer in NZ.
Apart from that, I don't really give a stuff which 'The Man' is running things.
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And wrt 'Watchmen' - this is the first film in a long time that I've been anything close to excited about. Not being a rabid fanboy,
I'm entirely comfortable with filmmakers changing elements of the storyline and structure to make the film 'work' (what I call the Tom Bombadil effect). As long as my intelligence isn't insulted in the transition.And...thankyou, lord, thankyou - Dr Manhattan: A superhero with genuine powers who works for the U.S. government. The role was once pursued by actor Keanu Reeves [but isn't actually being played by him]
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Well, you can start watching the back ten on line
I'll almost certainly wait until they come out on DVD. One good thing about all this piracy and general hi-tech 21st century jiggery-pokery is that the studios have been forced to reduce their release dates to a few months from first broadcast, so it shouldn't be too long a wait.
Pretty impressive but the gung-ho politics and obsession with image put me off a bit
I thought that was kinda the point? That's how soldiers are. As impressive as 'band of brothers' was, it did kind of gloss over the fact that soldiers get pretty damn feral in combat operations.
As far as books go:
Clive Barkers 'Imajica' (all 1100 pages...). Only the second Clive Barker I've ever read. Dunno if I'll bother with any others.
The Maurice Shadbolt 'Maori wars' trilogy. Probably wasn't a good idea to read them all back-to-back - as good as they were, his distinctive writing style started to grate a little by the end of the third one.
A couple of books about 'Mr Asia' (getting up to speed on my local history, y'see).
And by not entirely happy coincidence, this - a fairly cheap and nasty SAS-type cash-in, but does give a good insight into the mentality and triaining of the police firearms guys (from a UK perspective).