First is that I no longer have a girlfriend. Long story short, we’re apparently not compatible so after all that, I’m pretty good.

Another is that I’m now a proper freelancer… which is weird to say the least.

Then there are the ridiculous amount of projects I’ve undertaken for myself, most of which are designed to make people smile. I’ll get to them shortly.

But in case you’ve been tuning in to see the weird-ass writing style of one Leigh Stark, you’ve probably been saddened to find the blog not updated. Well, that was mostly due to a glitch I kept running into that stopped me from using parts of the blog within the WordPress version I was running.

After some tweaking tonight with WordPress, plugins (usually the root of problems any WP user will suffer), and some effort, that looks like it’s fixed and I can start blogging again!

Woohoo!

So the other part of this is this: I’ve started to redesign my blog well & truly. The new design is based off of something you can go get at Elegant Themes, but I’ll be attempting to make it truly unique (or hoping to) as the days roll on by. And if not unique, then definitely me.

I’m back, ya’ll.

As I headed back home from the city this morning, smoke caught my attention.

Being the oh-so-intelligent human that I am, I of course headed straight for the smoke to see what was up. You know, because we’re smart us humans: we head straight for death when we see it.

But there wasn’t any death when I arrived. Just a car on fire.

Click here to view the embedded video.

That’s a Ute on fire. What looked like a Holden Ute from what I could tell. And it was spewing its thick white smog at everyone it could find.

Sitting next to the Apple Store, it was beginning to make the crystal clear windows looks more like the titanium white coating that shells the iPod, old Macbook, and the people unlucky enough to prefer a white iPhone.

It’s pretty amazing that a car that small creates a smoke that heavy. Still, don’t recommend the smell over clean air. Wow, did it smell bad…

On the one hand, I think it must be hard for the writer to physically write this article as the viewpoint and coincidental names could be seen as "holy shit, I didn't see that one coming," while on the other should have been written a hell of a lot better.

Or at least passed through an editor.

They do have editors as News Limited right?

What I'm talking about is this:
Brendan Nelson to call cops over nude child on magazine cover

*sigh*

When will politicians learn?Last I recall, the police were brought in over the Bill Henson works. That didn't go very far and this image is less confronting than Henson's… so… you think this will work how, Mr. Nelson?

Take that as purely my opinion because this little blog entry has nothing to do with the story presented in the piece but rather how poorly written some of the lines of it were.

In it, we look at "Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson," an official title if you've ever seen one. We get that, followed by "Using the photograph sent a "two-fingered salute" to the rest of Australia, Dr Nelson said today." And then "Dr. Nelson" for the rest of the article.

Cool. Now he's a doctor. I do like it that the media expects us to remember that "Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson" also happens to be "Federal Opposition Leader Dr. Brendan Nelson." It's really nice of them to help point that out, especially when there'll be another official titled Nelson further down the page.

Under the "Child proud of photo" subsection, we switch to a different Nelson: the child-in-question's father, Robert Nelson, an art critic for The Age over there at Fairfax.

He is known as Professor Nelson.

It's a good thing that this story wasn't written for radio. I'd be confused as all hell.

It would say:

MY GOD THINKS WORLD YOUTH DAY IS BULLSHIT.

It wouldn't necessarily have to be all in caps either. Rather, it could resemble that of a decently written fragment sentence:

My God thinks World Youth Day is bullshit.

It could even be worded for the youth who happen to agree with me:

OMG-ish! My G*D thinks WYD is bullshit! LOL-OMG-ROFLMAO!

That one could have a blue or green pixel-y background to resemble the mobile phone generation.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen… my invisible, hypothetical, and altogether irrelevant deity happens to think that Sydney's Pope visit lasting five or six days and inappropriately titled World Youth Day is a crock of shit.

Just look at some of the things they'd like the public of Sydney to submit to…

Annoying People is Bad… except when the whole event annoys the shit out of the rest of us.

This week, the New South Wales government told the rest of us that if we were to annoy people attending this World Yuck Day, we could find ourselves in the shit.

What sort of policy is that?

This must be the living, breathing, and sexually gratified definition on "irony". We – the people of Sydney – have to endure 300 road closures, 500 clearways, over 30 bus & train stations set up for random bag searching, bus route changes, and a law that tells us if we do something that some attendees don't like, we can be fined for it.

Sure. That's bloody brilliant. Irony in a nutshell, kids.

This set of amendments actually include the following bit of text:

(1) An authorised person may direct a person within any World Youth Day declared area to cease engaging in conduct that:

    …(b) causes annoyance or inconvenience to participants in a World Youth Day event

Causes annoyance or inconvenience?! Jesus fucking Christ… wait, so the whole Pope visit annoying the living crap out of the rest of us is allowed to inconvenience and annoy the hell out of the rest of us but we can't annoy them? Wait… I'm sorry… I must be missing something here.

I'm probably not because in a scene typical of how fucked up our government actually is, it gets worse.

You see, you can actually be fined for annoying them.

The Herald reported this week that a breach of this so-called law would net you a fine of $5500.

That's a nice round number, isn't it? $5500. Five-thousand, five-hundred dollars. How do you come to such a nice number? Well, I think I've got the jist of it. You take the amount of Catholic child abuse cases that will probably make it to the news around the world this year – that's probably five and a bit – and you issue each victim with a thousand bucks to shut the victim up. That's the only logic that makes sense to me.

Seriously, if I "annoy" someone attending World Youth Day, wouldn't…
A. It be entirely subjective and hardly found to be decidedly annoying on the part of a few people.
B. Easier to ignore and told in a purely Australian way to "fuck off" and let everyone else have a good time.
or,
C. Tell me that there's a pub down the road and I should act on my Australian instincts and take advantage of a nice cold one.

What the hell does issuing a fine of $5500 accomplish, aside for making people poorer for no apparent reason and collecting on that much needed revenue because the New South Wales Police can?

Oh yes… we'll be getting some nice new pens. The premium sort.

I better be hearing about some brand spankin' new microscopes with this new Pope-fueled funding.

Seriously, the whole concept of a fine based on annoying someone is one of the most childish things I've heard in a while. This whole notion changes the following situations into scenes where someone can technically be fined:

Wearing a shirt that says "Jesus is a cunt": People objecting to the shirt have no proof suggesting the contrary. For all we know, Jesus was a cunt. The Bible isn't proven to be factual and believing in it extra hard doesn't make it a hard-hitting factual text. Rather, getting someone in trouble for wearing a series of words on a shirt is very much something of an oppressive culture which seems more like the sort of thing a religious visit like World Youth Day should aim not to be seen as.

Sitting in a park reading Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion": We already know that some people act pretty violently when they take it that their God is seen as a delusion in other peoples lives. Would it annoy you if I walked through Hyde Park or sat on a bench and read this? It might. And if it did, could I be fined for reading?

Passing out condoms: I'm not going to pass out condoms, but it has been suggested that one of the protests might just do that. Because Catholics don't believe in condoms – because that "withdrawl method" works sooooooo well – some people might get offended by the idea that someone else is trying to save their life.

Turning up and expecting The Wiggles: I imagine that this scenario would work like this. You'd turn up and find yourself dealing with people in the crowd all excited at this whole event and then, when the Pope himself come out, you yell out – as everyone is sitting listening for the first few words…

"What the fuck is this? Where the fuck are The Wiggles? I want my fucking money back."

The part of all of this that has me concerned is this whole fining bit for being inconvenienced. What if I'm inconvenienced? Can I send a bill of fifty-five-hundred bucks to the New South Wales government for every little inconvenience I get out of the World Youth Day celebrations? That seems only fair.

Second, what the fuck is with that logo? It's awful. The last thing I want to see is a piece of architectural art like the Sydney Opera House used as the commercial lynch-pin for the Catholic Church.

Why stop there? We could make Centrepoint into Christpoint.

Yuck. A cross among the Opera House… have you – the graphic designers who created this monstrosity – no dignity?

Okay. That one is probably rhetorical.

The article could be found in The Sydney Morning Herald and basically read as more than 90 percent of Australians (provided all 20 million Australians are represented by 1143 people) were still relying on old excuses like being too tired or too cold to not exercise.

"Everyone knows the importance and benefits a healthy lifestyle can bring and that they should exercise and eat well – but a startling number of Australians just aren't doing it, and it comes back to the same old excuses," dietitian Kate Di Prima said.

Let's just get one thing straight, Ms. Di Prima: you're a dietitian, therefore your job is to make sure you're healthy and other people are healthy. I take it based off of that that it is your job to go to the gym and come up with healthful eating schedules and other health-based crap that's supposed to make you fit.

Now I'm a journalist. A tired journalist. Oh sure, I'd like to exercise. Really, I would… but I'm just too fucking tired.

No, seriously. I'm exhausted. I'm writing this as I fall asleep.

So for those of us who work in jobs NOT related to losing weight, did you ever stop and think that we might actually really be too tired to exercise and it might not be an excuse?

Like… really. 

I know, I know Lil J. No one ever took you seriously. You told all your homeboys every year that you were going to throw the biggest shindig this side of the sheep sex worker industry but no one believed you.

They were like "Yeah yeah, Lil J. You cool, you cool, but we gonna kick it in Malaysia this year."

But now you're finally going to show them. You're bringing all of your homeys to one of the prettiest places in the world… and who cares that it looks just like a communist state.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, APEC is coming to Sydney much to the irritated faces of residents.

What might be seen as something important and fancy by the eyes of the dignitaries arriving is certainly not reflected in the eyes of the tired faces who board the trains, go to work, go home, and deal with this sort of shit everyday.

While important people like President George W. Bush dine on lavish meals and look out at the Harbour Bridge's welcoming APEC sign, Sydneysiders will be required to present identification to cross a road.

At least we know why the chicken didn't cross the road. Where the hell is a chicken supposed to keep his wallet or purse? Poultry pockets aren't exactly part of their anatomy. He must have kept trying and trying only to be denied entry every time.

And all he wanted to do was to check out Sydney's beautiful Botanical Gardens. But that would have all been in vain anyway since half of that is being allocated as garden space for the twenty or so important people who are apparently important to somebody… somewhere… I mean they've got to be, surely.

And then you've got the loud speakers all over the city, the incoming extra police and military, the fences, the concrete blocks…

All we really need is a curfew and we'll be one of those places we'd normally otherwise condemn.

Really, you shouldn't expect much from me when I'm tired but still want to comment on the sad state of the "world".

And today, the "world" consists of Lindsay Lohan.

Lindsay, Lindsay, Lindsay… what the fuck are you doing getting yourself arrested like Paris did?

Didn't all of you Hollywood-types learn from her mistake that YES you can be arrested? Shit, and you're not even an idiot, or at least a fool as stupid as Paris is. Do you really think the judge is going to take pity on you just because you're hotter than Paris?

Then again, this is Hollywood so you probably just have to be tried in the same district Paris was tried in and then somehow have mental problems for a nice and quick removal.

What I find ironic about this story is that Ms. Lohan is currently promoting her movie "I Know Who Killed Me" which is scheduled to hit cinemas in America on Friday.

Do you know who killed you, Lindsay? You did. Shit, stop fucking yourself up on excess drugs and alcohol. I don't give a shit if you want to take drugs, alcohol, or whatever… just don't over do it. Life is for having fun, not for fucking yourself over ten times from Sunday.

And if you can somehow pull yourself away from the glaring world of Lindsay Lohan's personal worldwide media coverage while you pull yourself off to Lindsay herself, then maybe you'll see you've just lost a ton of civil rights to the age of terrorism.

Is that what we should call it from now on? Maybe that should be our excuse. It's not in the story I'm going to link in a second; I just made it up. The Age Of Terrorism. It has a nice ring to it. It's not The Age Of Aquarius but The Age Of Terrorism. A bunch of Bin Laden's dancing around to The Age Of Aquarius singing the word "terrorism" in place of where "Aquarius" goes.

Shit, you could even claim it as an excuse reason for pretty much anything. The trains are late: the age of terrorism. Unemployment is up: the age of terrorism. My girlfriend won't fuck me: the age of terrorism. Shit, now that's some powerful fucking age there. The Bronze Age ain't got shit on The Age Of Terrorism.

Anyway, you've lost some of your civil liberties.  

The soon to be retired police commissioner Ken Moroney has announced that the police in NSW will start compiling a DNA database of people. This means that even if you haven't been convicted of a crime, your DNA stays on file. It helps to protect the innocent, you see… apparently.

I don't know. I see where Mr. Moroney is coming from, I really do. But there's something about the police having DNA of people in a database that makes me really distrustful of the police. There are some really corrupt people out there and having a database that stands to be used for scientific identification of people that essentially cannot be proved wrong (because DNA is that oh-so-powerful golden key in criminology) just disturbs the hell out of me.  

Another way to disturb me is to mention the term micropenis. 

Yeah, that term is apparently real. As such, I found a blog on the Herald site that's actually really quite good. Anyway, in this particular posting, the blogger talks about guys with pin dicks and how they always make up for the sex by an increased desire for oral sex and other forms of stimulation. Makes sense, I guess. That whole need to feel better about yourself, insecurity and whatnot. Make her cum / orgasm by way of your tongue and you'll feel like a better man because the size of your dick didn't do it. Shame it comes down to penis size, I guess.

If only personalities could give orgasms. Guys with large cocks but piss-small personalities would be struggling for an orgasm and guys with pin pricks and great personality would be causing multiple earthquake tremor inducing orgasms just from looking in the general vicinity of the female in question. And then guys stuck in the middle of both would still be… well… stuck in the middle.

Middle ground and all. You know that area.

Fuck, I don't even know what I'm on about.