05 November 2002

I've had a hard, long day, gardening, laying concrete paths, stayed up late last night watching "Silence of the Lambs"  (remind me to tell you about movies on Greek TV - start at 11pm, frequent breaks for 15 minutes of commercials, and a news bulletin at 12:30am, you're lucky if the film finishes much before 1:30 or 2am, if you last that long).   So I'm off to bed now; when I get up there should be some some interesting results from the US mid-term elections.  Noticeable how all the pollsters are keeping their heads down - badly burnt in 2000! 10:46:48 PM    comment []

You don't say!  (with apologies/acknowledgment to James Taranto's Best of the Web - OpinionJournal) Sex part of dating (Health24) I think that's been true of teenagers since I was one, in the late 50's/early 60's.  Maybe it's a lot more prevalent and starts a lot earlier nowadays, but I don't think the world has changed that much.  Mind you, I recall an article in Salon some time ago, remarking on how much more prevalent oral sex is among teens these days (not many girls went down on us in those days, I think - alas!). Found the link:  Gen X's change of head To the women who came of age in the '60s, oral sex was an act of great intimacy. To their daughters, it's about as intimate as shaking hands. 10:39:09 PM    comment []

Hey!  This is cool. Like any good blogger (ahem!), I checked my "referrer log" when I started up Radio a few minutes ago.  For the last few days, I've had lots of Google searches from Germany (google.de) looking for "schroeder and ketchup"  or similar search terms - in fact ever since I posted about the Ketchup Song, I've had lots of hits from Google (how's that? This totally unknown weblog starting a trend - chest puffed up at this point  :-) modestly, of course). Anyway, back to the point.  Today's referrer took the trouble to have Google translate my weblog into German (wow!  I remember back in the 80's when Denis Lock demo-ed prototype automatic machine translation to me, and I thought "not in my lifetime, baby" - but here it is, and as usual, Denis was right - sorry for doubting you Denis).  And Denis, since we're talking about these things, how about Google compared to the mainframe search engines we had back in the 70's?  Of course, Google and all the others wouldn't exist (spellcheckers and speech input also), without the research and prototyping that took place in the 60's and 70's. Back to the point once more: I'm not a German linguist, but it looks like totally authentic Teutonic to me: Das Roblog! Ein Forum für verteilende Nachrichten, Einblicke und musings über unser Leben in Griechenland, eine Ansicht der exiles von Südafrika, andere Themen des Interesses und für das Erforschen dieses neuen Mittels und meiner eigenen Kreativität. Bilden Sie möglicherweise einige neue Freunde und/oder Feinde? Lassen Sie uns sehen. Jahwohl, mein schatz! The whole thing is here, if German is your preferred language.  Scroll down a bit and see that my next post concerns cricket (how about that, a discussion about cricket in German!), and Darren Gough, "Englands Schlüsselbowler".  Then, just to rub in my feelings on the matter, here's my rough language about the Right Hon. SA Minister of Sport (prick!) in German: 1. Balfour ist ein deluxe Arschloch und ein schmutziger Rassist. 2. Balfour kennt bumsen-alles ungefähr Kricket. 3. Die glückliche nicht-rassische Gesellschaft predigte herzlichst durch Nelson Mandela und andere ist ein langer Weg aus. Seriously, though, isn't this web wonderful?  The things we thought were futuristic twenty years ago, and other things that were inconceivable and undreamt of then, are now commonplace, even from a small seaside cottage on a remote Greek island (mind you, with a very reliable and workable ISDN connection, something I never aspired to in Cape Town - can broadband be far behind?  I need it).  I'm in awe of it every day.   10:16:48 PM    comment []