How to Get Your Ass Kicked...

...or 'losing at Donkey Kong in a way that makes you look like a complete dickwad'.


Thanks to FBi radio I won a free double pass to see King of Kong at the Dendy Newtown so I took Sir and we had free Coopers (green label) and settled down for what I envisioned to be nerd central.

For those of you who haven't heard about it, King of Kong is a documentary set around the two contenders for the Donkey Kong world record (highest score). Billy Mitchell (pictured above, receiving an award for Pacman) has been the champion since 1982, his teenage years. Steve Wiebe is relatively new to the competitive side of the game but manages to beat Billy's longstanding record. Rivalry – and hilarity – ensues.

The doco plays things nicely. Billy is portrayed as the arrogant twat, while Steve is just a high school science teacher cum good. Along the way there are some great quotes from the main 'characters', which although sincere, need a healthy dose of irony from the audience to allow the best jokes to slip through. A selection:

Walter Day (video game referee): "I wanted the glory, I wanted the fame. I wanted the pretty girls to come up and say, 'Hi, I see that you're good at Centipede'."

Jillian Wiebe (Steve's daughter): "Work is for people who can't play video games."

Billy Mitchell: "No matter what I say, it draws controversy. It's sort of like the abortion issue."

Mr Awesome (Steve's 'patron' and gamer striving to have his Missile Command record recognised): "Everything would've fell right into place, but he forgot about one thing, about me convincing Steve Wiebe not to be a chump, talking him out of chumpatizing himself."

Brian Kuh (Billy's 'protege', wandering around Funspot as Steve approaches the end of a Donkey Kong game): "If anybody wants to see, there's a Donkey Kong kill screen coming up."

Jillian Wiebe: "I never knew that the Guinness World Record Book was so important."
Steve Wiebe: "I guess a lot of people read that book."
Jillian Wiebe: "Some people sort of ruin their lives to be in there."

Ah, the wisdom of children. In the doco, Jillian looks about eight years old and I swear that she's far more mature than most of the gamers introduced.

Anyway, it's a well-made doco, I recommend that you watch it, if not for the petty squabbling over pixels, then certainly the gamers' dubious aggrandisation.

* I also wanted to add that of course I know that the correct Aussie way to spell 'ass', as in one's bottom, is ARSE but clearly I would have missed the punful title.

BLACKLISTED (Feb, 2008)

The following businesses are hereby BLACKLISTED for hiring people who disobeyed my NO ADVERTISING MATERIAL sticker:

LJ Hooker Crows Nest
Changes Exercise Studio Crows Nest
First National Real Estate Peter Hill
Fitzgerald & Sons Removals
Coles
Franklins (TWO catalogues)

Mint condition

For some time now, for maybe four or five months, my flatmate and I have been at war with some tiny red ants. They haven't exactly swarmed our apartment (hmm, except for a shocking discovery of a colony of them in a shoe box in my cupboard, which I had to flood out of existence in the bath) but we keep finding drowned ones in our kettle for no apparent reason.

This doesn't make much sense to us. Not long after we first moved in, there were some black ants that tried to storm our liquor cabinet (understandable, lots of sugar) but why these red ones seem to be attracted to boiled water, we have no idea.

Anyway, in accordance with the dr witmol code of living, I refuse to keep pesticides in my apartment as I believe they do humans more harm than the pests they eradicate. So I looked up some natural remedies for repelling ants. Among the ones that we tried were sprinkled borax (which I use for cleaning my bathroom anyway) which didn't work because it kept getting wet, and ground cinnamon, which just didn't work, perhaps because the remedy was species specific.

Yesterday I went to the farmers market (a visit that resulted in me rejecting to buy truss tomatoes at $9.99/kg no matter how organic or hydroponic they were) and happened upon a stall selling potted herbs. Excited by the prospect of keeping fresh rocket on hand, I also purchased a pot of common mint, remembering that mint was an ant repellent I hadn't yet tried.

My friends, we have success. For while sitting here transcribing an interview for a profile I'm working on, I spotted one of the critters brazenly marching around on my desk. I picked a few leaves of mint and crushed them, smearing a line in the path of the little trooper. Repelled, it attempted to tramp around the line until I decide to smear a circle of mint around it, to see what it would do. Caught in a holding pattern - getting to the mint border, then turning away, only to encounter another mint border - it went stir crazy.

Here's a pic (click on it to get the full image):


Unfortunately it soon died in a vinegar dropper accident as I attempted to form a mint maze with a vinegar watercourse, otherwise I would have a short video to post of its incessant, frustrated pacing.

Tonight I will fortify the kettle with mint turrets.

P.S: I'm not entirely sure whether the ant species in question is of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad fire ant variety as I was led to believe these were Queensland's problem. However, I am unable to find a comprehensive field guide about behaviour (e.g. penchant for kettles, suicide by drowning, aversion to mint?) so I don't have any other species suggestions.

As yet I've not been stung by any of them, even though I've been picking them off one by one when they happen across my desk, so I don't know (and don't want to know) whether the resulting pain is like being burnt. Can anyone tell me what they think this ant is?

Economies of scale

A partial zoom of Chris Jordan's work 'Ben Franklin 2007', which depicts 125,000 US hundred dollar bills ($US12.5 million), the amount the US government spends every hour on the war in Iraq.

The piece is part of an exhibition called 'Running the Numbers', which illustrates the scale of US consumption in various industries. The artist says, "My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books".

You can visit his site at: Chris Jordan Photography

Tears

Sometimes I don't know the difference between the sound of a child laughing and the sound of a child crying.

Across the Universe

The Beatles' 'Across the Universe', subject of a recent blog entry about Rufus Wainwright has been chosen to represent Planet Earth at the Univision Song Contest. Or something like that.

Well, apparently NASA has decided to beam the song into outer space, perhaps in the hope that it will bring world peace.

Whatever. It's a good song.

P.S: Rufus was GREAT, I highly recommend seeing him live if you get a chance. He's one of those guys who has genuine charm, wit and great legs.