The leader of the National Party apologised to me today. For which of his numerous would-be crimes, you ask? Well, let me transcribe our entire conversation for you.

Me (walking through the foyer towards the door): 'Excuse me.'
John Key: 'Sorry.' (moves out of the way)

So the next time John Key pisses you off, just remember he did once apologise to Dan, even if it was for just being in the way.

I've had a thousand apologies from Telecom over the past few months, but it seems finally they've fixed whatever it was that was broken with our internet, and all it took was two months of calling every other night or so. I'm not sure what I've mentioned in the past, but here's a random list of shiat we've had to deal with: calll centre operators who couldn't bring up the account, call centre operators who repeatedly asked me to restart the modem, as if we hadn't tried that the first ten times we called, call centre operators who insisted the nightly outages (6pm-10pm, only on weeknights) were the result of interference from the streetlight outside, call centre operators who said it was power surges affecting our modem, call centre operators who said Telecom doesn't even have a complaints department, call centre operators who'd say a contractor was booked then didn't book one, call centre operators who sent out contractors during the day, when there was no problem (as repeatedly told to call centre operators who refused to listen), call centre operators who refused to even consider the possibility the outages could be related to peak load on the network, call centre operators who were operating off scripts...

And that's just the call centre operators who were in New Zealand. God help Telecom if they offshore any more jobs to the absolutely useless operators in Manila.

Luckily, I managed to get someone reasonable on the phone last week, and now everything seems to be working - and to be honest, I've no idea what it is they've done.

Ooh, I just saw a nipple on the lead item on tonight's news. There are going to be some fun, righteous emails to read in the morning when I get to work!

So from Telecom to Sky. We recieved a call from a telemarketer operating on behalf of Sky, offering three months half-price if we signed up. tariqa  told her we were already customers, so there was no need for the signing up part - we'd just take the three months half-price, thankyou very much. The girl said she couldn't do that, so we'd have to call Sky.

After all my practise with Telecom, I decided to try out my new skills with the hapless Sky call centre operators... who, to their credit, were much feistier than their weak Telecom counterparts. It took three calls, but I soon had a manager on the line basically grovelling for forgiveness, and a $70 credit! I'm getting really good at dealing with call centres.

So this whole Georgia-Russia thing, I can't believe the ridiculousness coming from the Americans, and the way most media organisations have just taken their bullshit straight. Is there not a huge irony in hearing Bush and Rice ramble on about not invading/occupying other countries? Georgia started this war, with full encouragement from the US - the Associated Press has even reported on the links between the Republican Party (the ones currently running the US, remember) and their puppets in Georgia. One of John McCain's top advisors is even on the payroll of the Georgian government, offering foreign policy advice - he was also a part of the PNAC and one of the architects behind the Iraq invasion. I didn't get this info from Wikipedia (AP/Russell Brown, in part), but it's all there.

The people in South Ossetia want to be a part of Russia/joined with the North; they're ethnically and culturally closer to Russians than Georgia (itself an Iraq-style patchwork); and Russian troops were already there. What the hell was Georgia thinking?! They already had the freakin' oil pipeline, now it's probably going to end up in Russian hands.

Hey, don't say it's a conspiracy theory.

Onto matters closer to home, Lando won't eat the catfood the vet says he should. I recorded a cover of a Kinks song as part of a challenge on htown.co.nz (warning: dodgy vocals, rushed recording). I'va hardly watched a single bit of the Olympics (it doesn't seem like the real Olympics starts till the athletics does anyway). 

First off, in order to win the war on pollution its waging before the Olympics, Beijing has declared war on the sky. Yes, in order to clear the thick smog that blankets the city, they are going to make it rain by firing chemically-coated artillery shells into the clouds. This ticks so many 'evil genius/axis of evil' boxes - chemical weapons, weather control, misguided science to name but a few.

Viceland.com sent me a message asking if they could link to and do an entry on Ice McGunface, and I told them no. Firstly, Vice, the magazine sucks. I hate Vice. Secondly, I'd imagine their website to be only worse, and there's no telling what crap people might post. Besides, since when did blogs ask people for permission to link to stuff?

Last weekend we had the Star Wars ultramarathon - it's kind of shameful it's taken this long for me write about it! Rob, Jennah and Simon came over during the early parts of The Phantom Menace, which showed commitment, and yeah. Even Tariqa passed on heading out into what was the coldest day of the year and made it to the end! We passed on watching Family Guy's Blue Harvest immediately afterward though, haha.

My sleeping has gotten better, I think the virus I had at the time must've been a lot harsher than I thought - I didn't even know I had one till the doctor said, and now it's gone I'm not so tired yet awake. I'm getting by on six or seven hours a night, which isn't bad.

I had so much I was going to write about, and now I can't remember any of it. If my phone had a camera I could show you the smashed up bus stop on the way to work which used to have a life-size portrait of Ali Williams on it, and now doesn't, but it doesn't have a camera.

Tariqa's written about the neighbours' big fight with the smashed windows and all that last week, but she made it friends only so I suppose I'll have to say something! They were having a domestic long after I'd meant to have gone to sleep. I heard some pretty heavy banging, so called the police - then while I'm on the phone to the operator, there are three loud smashes, none of which sound like bottles.

Come to think of it, sounds of smashing bottles might've signalled even worse trouble to come!

But anyway, I fell asleep once they quietened down (except the baby, which cried long and hard), which must've been when the cops arrived. Today the windows were suddenly all fixed, large boxes on the lawn their kids ended up playing in (before relocating to our lawn, hence my previous post!). I doubt they called the landlord - I was considering doing that myself to be honest, but never got to it. It seems loud guy (who I'm sure I've complained about before) has moved out now though, so maybe things will be fine from here on in.

Damn, it seems Ice McGunface has raped the battery on this laptop. I've been here half of Viva La Vida and it's already down to 50%.

I'm sure I'll remember everything I was going to write about once the battery hits 5% and the computer shuts itself down...

Seriously. 400,000 pounds, about a million dollars in NZ money, and they came up with this monstrosity? WTF?! This isn't your ordinary re-branding-gone-wrong; just look at it. The logo for the 2012 Olympics in London is a fucking nightmare! It looks like the cover of a rejected Wham! album. As well as reading '2012' over two confusing lines, it's apparently meant to represent an athlete about to start a race.

Looks more like a camel taking a shit, if you ask me. Surely this is a hoax of some sort...

But, it could have been worse. SO MUCH WORSE... Or so much better, depending on your opinion... the BBC today broadcast a few other suggestions, including one inspired by Goatse,of all things (if you're not aware of Goatse, wait till you get home frm wherever it is you are before searching for it on Google, I beg you]). Seems it was deliberate too.

Others are saying the official logo looks like Lisa Simpson giving a blowjob, which I can totally see now. Or a tangram!

Regardless of whatever it's meant to inspire, it makes me want to wear Hypercolor t-shirts and do aerobics. So yeah, it must be bad.