These words make me nervous, and they should make you nervous too, in the way the inquisition and gas chambers do.

Give it a couple of hundred years, but one day some poor human somewhere will be standing in a dock answering to a machine on this…

The governor largely stayed out of sight, except for posting a brief video on Twitter in which he played with a big knife and talked about autographing state property to be sold at auction to raise extra money. Police have said he arrived at the airport carrying a Dora the Explorer doll, hoop earrings and a jar of petroleum jelly.

They said the 10-month-old pet had a history of bizarre behaviour – it had attempted to suffocate the family’s pet goat on numerous occasions.

The alligators in the lake have also gone, chased out by beavers whose dams now have to be blown up by farmers because they cause fields to flood.

A recent tip from Martha Stewart included on the website: “On a mild day, let in the fresh air. Open windows to rid the house of stale winter air and indoor pollutants.”

Mental Note: GREATEST THREAT OF KIDNAP FOR EXPATRIATE WORKERS 1: Iraq 2: Nigeria 3: Haiti 4: Colombia/Mexico 5: Ecuador 6: Venezuela 7: Philippines

Bonobos share 98 percent of their DNA with humans — they also apparently share a love of decaf caramel machiatos.

A Sunday school teacher asked, “Johnny, do you think Noah did a lot of fishing when he was on the Ark?” “No,” replied David. “How could he, with just two worms?”

However, researchers concluded that the premise for such a device was fatally flawed because “people in many areas of the world do not find faecal odour offensive, since they smell it on a regular basis”.

The scam was uncovered when Japanese moviestar Maiko Kawamaki went on a talk-show and wondered why her new pet would not bark or eat dog food. She was crestfallen when told it was a sheep. One couple said they became suspicious when they took their “dog” to have its claws trimmed and were told it had hooves.

Seven monks were injured in clashes between rival orders over control of a rebel monastery.

“From what I saw, most of it has been looted or burned. There are overturned cars and lots of broken windows. People were throwing rocks, coconuts and steel bars.”

weapons manufacturer BAE Systems launched a range of “environmentally friendly” munitions as part of its corporate responsibility initiative with these immortal words: “Lead used in ammunition can harm the environment and pose a risk to people.”

Donors were often college students who traded their sperm for beer money.

The State Department also listed the murder last year of Kazakh opposition politician Altynbek Sarsenbaiuly, his bodyguard and driver as “unlawful deprivation of life”.

The results proved that a single electron could escape during a half-wave of the infrared laser, fleeing in less than 400 attoseconds – an unimaginably short time. If you slowed down time so that an attosecond lasted for 1 second, that second would last for 30 billion years – more than twice the age of the universe.

Sam Harris, in his new short book, Letter to a Christian Nation, hits the bull’s-eye as usual:

“It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver-lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ… Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.”

A Sunday school teacher said to her children, ” We have been learning how powerful kings and queens were in Bible times. But, there is a higher power. Can anybody tell me what it is?” One child blurted out, “Aces!”

In a bizarre twist, the RSPCA this week suggested residents try wiping haemorrhoid cream on the toads – to have an anaesthetising effect – then putting them into the freezer.

After the man’s body was recovered and taken to a local funeral home, jumping at the festival resumed, said Fayette County Sheriff Bill Laird…

Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.

There are also glow-inthedark pigs and goats which produce spider’s silk.

Polygamy was standard and men considered women placed on earth to please them. Thracians considered death an honor and accepted it as a natural part of life. The Thracians were extremely proud people. If a man’s father was murdered, it was considered practical to slaughter the murderer, his family (extended), and his livestock. Also, upon the death of a husband, the wives would fight over who was loved more by the deceased. Usually determined by the winner of a match to the death. The wives would tie their left legs together and fight with strips of cowhide and a staff. The winner of this deathmatch would then commit suicide and be given the honor of being buried at the right hand of her husband.

While generally friendly, he is sometimes prone to sudden fits of bitter contempt for random things

There are 431,558 Joneses in Britain and it is the second most common surname in the kingdom after Smith. Blaenau Ffestiniog, in north-west Wales, is the town with the highest proportion of Joneses in Britain. Jones is the most common Welsh surname and means son of John.

If you ever find yourself being arrested make sure it is in Finland as inmates get daily spa & sauna services as well as many other positive detention practices. Try to avoid the usual suspects: Russia, Turkey, Romania… “If this is not so, our current understanding of how structure forms is just not correct,” says Oleg Gnedin of The Ohio State University in Columbus.

Police say something bad was bound to happen when a butcher knife, the movie “Halloween” and a group of drinking men came together at a Rogers motel room.

Marshall McLuhan’s description of television as a “cool” medium—as opposed to the “hot” medium of print—was hard for me to understand when I read it 40 years ago, because the source of “heat” in his metaphor is the mental work required in the alchemy of reading. But McLuhan was almost alone in recognizing that the passivity associated with watching television is at the expense of activity in parts of the brain associated with abstract thought, logic, and the reasoning process. Any new dominant communications medium leads to a new information ecology in society that inevitably changes the way ideas, feelings, wealth, power and influence are distributed and the way collective decisions are made.

The number of people in the developed world who have limbs or digits amputated is around 390million.

It is known that during the first century an as could only purchase a pound of bread or a litre of cheap wine (or according to Pompeiian graffiti, a cheap prostitute).

“A man holds a woman by the hand and dances with her in front of everyone. Does that serve the national interest? Dr Zahar

an old man died in my building last week
this is all that was left of him
strangers put it out on the street
a few hours later it was gone

This oft used phrase poses several problems, not the least of which is of the ‘question begging’ variety. Who are these not so innocent children?

The cynic within me is immediately drawn to the church and its various evils, but could it be that the majority of the general populace, screen writers most definitely included, not only speak in cliches but actually think in them?

And if so, what does this mean for thought in general?

Judging by the current incarnation of the Sydney Morning Herald ‘newspaper’ one can only assume, not much.

It does you know.

Tsar!

Drug Tsar. Crime Tsar. Health Tsar. Blah Tsar.

Come on! The last Tsar was assassinated along with almost his whole family for ruining the largest country on the planet. How is this a bureaucratic role model?

You get whatshisface from that whitepeopleblog railing against the apparently incorrect/inappropriate use of Nazi, but nothing about this proliferation of Tsar, which means Emporer by the way. I mean, come on, even un-summed emperors have killed more people that Hitler ever did. Closer to home, Stalin killed about 20 million, but just because he wasn’t as effiecient as the Germans, now you can call any twat with a job description and a headline, a Tsar!

There are words  ‘normal’ people use and then there are words ‘normal’ people don’t use. The latter are generally employed by scientists, professionals and insecure people with too may letters after their name who choose to use language as a form of primitive battery rather than the form of communication it’s supposed to be.

Of course, like any dichotomy, this one is flawed, there is obviously spectrum and then there’s context, but on the whole, you know, we only regularly use some few thousands of the million or so words English has to offer.

In these hazy areas, lingering close to words that are just plainly wrong, like sanguine, are words that people sometimes use thinking they know what they mean, only to discover some time later that they had it slightly wrong.

Not totally wrong, like thinking dearth means alot of instead of ‘lack of’ or the justifiable confusion surrounding flammable and inflammable which oddly both mean ‘likely to catch fire’. On this briefly, unflammable is out and so are left with  flame resistant which, when you think about it, is about as useful as  water resistant weather gear.

Back to the subject: ambivalent. Alot of people think this word means ‘don’t care either way’ and it kinda has that vibe to it, so I can see why people go there, I did. Things are not made any easier by the common explanation of ’sitting on the fence’. I guess we here in Australia consider fence sitting to be something of crime and so ascribe this flippy, floppy, half-arsed kind of aura to anyone who dares not to see things in black and white. Because you are either with us or against us. There is no possibility that you might not be either doesn’t often  seems to occur

What alot of people don’t consider as that someone might actually be sitting on that fence for entirely different reasons. They might actually ‘care very strongly both ways’, which as you might just now be guessing, is what ambivalent means. Just goes to show you, you know, books and covers etc.

Having said this, i never really was that passionate  about it, I suppose I was unbivalent or something, but last night heard it uttered in the phrase ‘I am deeply ambivalent’ and it struck me.

That flappy, care free, wind in the willows kind of vibe is all a charade, a sham, a diversion. Beneath the surface when it rolls it around your brain it sticks like treacle.

A lot should really be alot. It would save alot of time for alot of people and would allow alot more people to allot less time while saying a little more in their text messages without having to allot more funds to their budget

I get that their is alot of debate regarding this on the internet and it seems that alot of word facists and – shoch horror – racists really get a kick out of holding this over people, alot of people.

To the word fascists is say merely, ‘get over it’, we move with the time here on the intergoogle and if  ‘meh’ can make it into the dictionary then the words ‘a’ and ‘lot’ can hook up. The other alott has two t’s anyway, so what’s the hassle.

To the racists out there, and I use the word lightly because race is not really a valid way of making distinctions between people, I say ‘if you have to win an argument by mugging ‘English as a second, third, fourth or eighth language’ people with grammar’ (yes, they generally are far smarter than you, the single language, first-world males who seem to simultaneously inhabit every comment field on every website of the entire www) then you should, perhaps, not have engaged in the argument in the first place.

Please don’t confuse this to pulling someone up on semantics: one of the most pleasurable passtimes know to the human animal.

In the realm of pithy American sayings, not much rears its head above the marginally obnoxious, ‘cut to the chase’ being a stand out example. It’s probably not even that it’s American, but rather that the idiom harks to Hollywood and the life barely any of us lead, and being humans, who don’t often like things that don’t have anything to do with us, it rubs us the wrong way, as if being rubbed the right way in public was any way to conduct you affairs

But it’s on the subject of rubbing that I have to say the Americans have hit on what might be one of the most sublime idioms there is. And by sublime here you need to  picture the fat little kid with his face full of chocolate cake on a rainy winters’ day, not some crazy six-armed Indian goddess or tard infested dance-music hellhole

I really think this is one of those bottom-line issues that might just be the one thing we all have in common; the one thing to bridge our all our differences, something we could, perhaps, look to basing the UN charter on, because you know that when you do get that new piece of clothing, no matter how well-fitting it seems at some stage you are eventually going to find the tweak: that one spot where a thread or label or inner seam just doesn’t sit right. And there’s the rub.

It’s the aha moment, because you always knew there was going to be one and walking around not knowing where it is or when it was going to strike was a torture, again, of the sublime kind. This sublime being a lot less like the little fat kid and a lot more like the crazy six armed lady’s younger brother – the one with the sword.

I also have this problem with food and take it as a bad omen if I don’t get a stain on something new the first time I eat in it.

Man, not since Will Smith’s ego shafted IRobot by piquing the studio’s interest in its investment, have I been so disappointed by a film that would have, could have, should have and almost was, fucking awesome!

Are the dimwits who sign the checque books so retarded, that in 2009, they still think people want or need a sob filled happy ending – in a fucking movie about the end of the world, for christ’s sake????

There was an opportunity here to complete the story arc back to T1, offering buckets of closure with a magnificent and well acted twist (in the form of Sam Worthington) and they opt to drag the whole  shebang out into another ‘franchise sequel’ – T5 with ‘heart’ strings. As if there weren’t enough threads to weave a sequel, or perhaps trilogy, from t2!!!!!

This film is outstanding for 1hour and 58 minutes and craps out so totally and utterly in what can only be (one hopes) a rancid, audience approved studio ending that you want to walk out, except you can’t because the fucking thing is over

“Dear Coke-Addled Studio Executive.
The whole emotional attachment we have with the film is based on the understanding that this is where it touches back to T1 – i.e. the original story arc is completed, as in, that this is the moment where John Connor sends Kyle Reece back in time to start the bloody thing in the first place – a fact we sorely needed reminding of after the abomination that was T3.

Were you so fucking high, or busy having your balls licked or enthralled by the walk-out surveys of your selected test-audiences that you couldn’t see that your happy heart-swapping, sorry, warming ending, negates the entire film?

A note here on script writing:

When you have really good actors and the script already allows them to portray the intricacies of the philosophically blurry relationship between humans and machines YOU DON’T NEED TO RAM IT DOWN OUR FUCKING THROATS. The most retarded viewer will get it, even if they can’t express themselves on a form.