Adrian's Space

A new type of scammer (at least for me).  You might find this information useful.

E-mail address used:
jane80sonic@hotmail.com

Web site directed to:
http://janeroom.mylittlecamparty.com/

Note that both of these things might change for you.

It redirects you to:
http://slickcams.com/

The e-mail will most likely be identical to this:

hi there i saw your pics i think youre hot maybe we can meet me on msn
messenger my name there is jane80sonic@hotmail.com hope we can chat
and have some fun there, see you soon thanks! Jane :)!

They might change the e-mail address and name (Jane, jane80sonic@hotmail.com) but the rest will be identical, most likely.

As for what was said, it is the same every time.  Here is a link to someone in August 2006 who got the exact same thing:
http://www.darrenstraight.com/blog/2006/08/09/an-instant-message-chat-with-natalie-the-messenger-bot/

I can say that I got word-for-word the exact same thing 18 months later!

If you get this, then do the following:

1. DO NOT accept the file (my_new_thong_pic) - it is a virus that will infect your computer.
2. DO NOT give them your credit card details (duh).  They will keep charging you every month and you CANNOT EVER cancel it (they don't actually strip your credit card clean apparently, just do it in bits and pieces).
   

Feel free to talk to "her" and see for yourself what the bot says.  Feel free to peruse the above web pages, if they are still active. 

It all sounds quite genuine, and perhaps believable too.  None of the usual spelling errors, sounding personal, and its not a Nigerian scam.  This is a porn scammer.  As far as I know, actually there is no real porn content on there, it's all a scam.

Note: This was originally posted in early November 2007, prior to being banned for having exposed Kato's evil actions.  I had removed this briefly in the vain hope of getting Somey to undo the bans/hacking of my account.  This is no longer possible, hence I am returning this, so that Kato's deeds can be exposed properly.

Every so often we come across a person who is such a great liar and a manipulator that it doesn't matter what we do, we can't defeat them.  So we see a way to defeat them - use their same techniques against them.  We see that if we lie in a clever and manipulative fashion, we can hurt them.

It sounds great.  You go out there and you tell this well placed lie and hey presto, instant satisfaction.  They get punished.

But there is an empty feeling in your heart, because whilst they are punished to the same level that they deserved for their lies, its actually not because of their lies.  Its because of your lies.  So in a sense there are two wrongs being committed - your lies and their lies.  They get away with their lies, and they get punished unjustly for your lies.  You figure it all works out in the end, but does it really?

See of course if they had wronged you through their lies, then you wrong them through your lies then it all balances out.  But the problem is they had wronged you, then you wouldn't be able to wrong them - because they would know it, and would be able to manipulate you.  So in fact the only way to get justice is to wrong them for something that they did to someone else.  And is that justice?  What about the person who they wronged?  They get no personal satisfaction from it.  And what about you?  You have done something wrong, and got away with it.

But even in that perfect situation, where it works perfectly, and you don't do what is tempting and keep going on with the lies, there is still the problem of other people caught in the middle.  There is the problem with people who like the people who you are lying about, that get hurt too.  People who like you too.  Do you share the lie with them?  What if they end up getting manipulated too?  Are you hurting your friends?

And then the problem gets much worse if something goes wrong.

Some time ago, as I said previously, Kato, a user on Wikipedia Review, decided to tell a big lie with regards to trying to set up SlimVirgin, an administrator on Wikipedia.  He thought it was a good and honourable thing to do, and that it would help our overall cause, and of course we can understand that (and I can forgive him for that).  We all knew it was a lie, but we felt that it was justified because it would hurt SlimVirgin, who was a menace.  Except that for the lie to work, it required for all of us to lie too.  And the lies had to include posts on Wikipedia Review.  We not only had to not say anything - we had to lie about things that were already being said. 

And ultimately, who was hurt by it?:

• Private Musings (who likely belongs to Thebainer, not to SlimVirgin) - an abusive user, but nonetheless not deserving to be banned like that, and one who we could have got punished legitimately through more open means
• JzG - an abusive admin (at least according to Kato and others), but who did nothing wrong here, and suddenly there are calls that he should be desysopped, as a lot of people on Wikipedia are blaming him for it.
  
• Fred Bauder - an admin who some want to get rid of - but who did the right thing in going to Robert Black to clarify things
• Robert Black - a blogger who suddenly is in the middle of a whole huge amount of drama
  
• The general Wikipedia adminship - it hurt the whole lot of them, or at least those that got involved in the various admin noticeboard postings, and the whole situation.  But how many of those admins were actually abusive?  Or deserving of anything bad against them?  Most are good people.
• A lot of people just generally on Wikipedia - people who got involved in the various arguments
• A group of people who JzG (and others) banned for their involvement, but were actually innocent - yet Kato didn't say a thing to stop it, and they remain banned
• People generally on Wikipedia Review - who were being lied to about the whole thing, and who got upset about the whole thing and couldn't make sense of it.
• People in the Wikipedia Review trusted users forum - who had used his fake admin account CBOrgatrope and then got their own accounts banned, which hadn't done a single thing wrong
• Me - whilst most people on Wikipedia Review acknowledge the problems, they incorrectly are blaming me for them, not the person who was actually responsible, Kato
• MOASPN - this guy, whoever he is, got banned, just for being related to the whole thing - in spite of doing nothing.  Perhaps abusive, perhaps not
• Kato himself - his accounts, which other than this had done nothing wrong, got banned from Wikipedia.  He had to delete his entire blog that was linked to this.  He ended up quitting Wikipedia Review, which didn't help the situation at all, and I am not too impressed about.  And he created a big problem with one of Wikipedia Review's most prominent users, Blissyu2.  And whilst a lot of people support him right now, in time a lot of people might not.  And he feels bad about it.  And he looks bad because of it.  And that is really sad.
  

And in this really horrible example, of when everything possible goes wrong (in what was, technically at least, a brilliant set up that worked exactly right), everyone got hurt.  Everyone, whether friend or foe, intended victim or not, or even the person doing it.  And at the end, whilst people will get over their feelings of hurt, it will take a lot longer to make sense of it all, and that is where the real problems lie.

Next time, perhaps we should be looking at attacking lies with truth, not with more lies.  More lies make it worse.

Addendum: It seems that Moulton has added this to Wikipedia Review discussion forums here. One comment asked is "What about the problem with betraying confidences?"  Actually that is an interesting question.  Because the problem with lying, and telling someone else to lie for you is that they then get hurt because they can't betray your confidence.  A lot of the problems and hurt that were caused by this was because a lot of the lying was behind closed doors, as it were.  As for my blog post, as stated elsewhere, it was first posted in Kato's own blog post "The Sting", then reposted on Moulton's blog, which was read by several Wikipedia administrators and acted on.  The next day, I posted the same thing in my blog post.  Hence I did not betray anyone's confidence.  The purpose behind my reposting it is that I posted it from a different perspective, as someone who did not approve of what Kato had done.  I am in fact somewhat surprised that Kato doesn't undelete his original blog post.  Nonetheless, I think that telling the truth about this thing is very important, if we are to resolve the many problems that it caused.

Note: This was originally posted on 7 November 2007, then hidden briefly because this post was the whole reason that Somey gave for "banning me" from Wikipedia Review (meaning = he hacked my account, changing the password on both my forum account and on the login to root - I own the place so this acted effectively as a takeover).  Of course, noting that this was a takeover and not a ban puts in to a clearer perspective as to what was really going on.  This was a case of lies and smears being used to steal a site from me, as opposed to oh no I complained too much.  Of course, removing this post only served to allow them to pretend that I had never had a valid case against Kato.  Luckily I never really deleted it.  Kato has since done more awful things, which will be exposed in the future.  Wikipedia Review is seriously going downhill.  It is time for a change, to sort things out and to move forward in a more positive direction.

It all started with one innocent-looking change to an obscure article on Robert Black, a professor who specialises in studying the after affects of the Lockerbie bombing, a similar case to the Port Arthur massacre in terms of its mystery and intrigue. The article hadn't been edited for over a month, and an editor decided to make this one change:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Black_%28professor%29&diff=167507361&oldid=158276143

If its a bad change, then they will just change it back, won't they?

Well, they did. And then it was restored. And then removed again, and then there was a whole massive argument about it. Essentially about whether it was vandalism or not. Over the course of the next 3 days, this article which hadn't been edited at all for the previous month and a half was edited a total of 34 times, and in those 34 changes, there was practically no difference between the version from a month and a half ago, and the new version:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Black_%28professor%29&diff=168147337&oldid=167507361

So why did this cause all of this drama? Why did this one tiny little thing even matter?

Well, see Robert Black specialises in the Lockerbie bombing, and he has a blog where he posts new items in relation to the Lockerbie bombing. He posts about 5 or 6 new posts per day, mostly just copied from other people's research. In one of these posts, he posted something that exposed SlimVirgin's involvement in the Lockerbie bombing:

http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2007/10/wikipedia-and-lockerbie.html

9 lines linking to the case written and verified by Ludwig de Braekeleer that gave so much negative publicity to Wikipedia, and so much positive publicity to Wikipedia Review, the case that exposed the menacing SlimVirgin's involvement in the Lockerbie bombing and her subsequent abuse on Wikipedia. The case that led to such a great amount of hyper-censorship on Wikipedia at the time, with links galore removed, something which it has subsequently been determined was the wrong thing to do. And here was someone doing the same thing again, to bring back those memories.

And all of this led to a number of unjust bans on innocent Wikipedia members who had done nothing wrong, all because of administrators panicking over this reversion war and the possibility of possibly censoring information or alternatively possibly exposing private information and the whole confusion about this.

In the end, the target of this, a new abusive sock puppet account called Private Musings, was banned too.

You see, on Wikipedia Review I had exposed Private Musings as an abusive sock puppet, one of a string of abusive sock puppets used by high-ranking Wikipedia administrators.

But you see I didn't know for sure who it was, and whilst it looked like SlimVirgin, I couldn't be sure, so I asked for some help. I mean surely there are other abusive people out there, not just SlimVirgin? But see a few other people who commented determined that in their opinion it was either MONGO or Essjay. So I posted this. And Kato felt that, intellectually, it was wrong of us to publish in a blog what were only suspicions of abusive sock puppets. Even though this account said that it was a sock puppet, and we could tell by their editing patterns that they were highly abusive, he felt that it was wrong to publish this.

So Kato set a plan in motion to test to see if this account was SlimVirgin, and the good thing was that even if it wasn't SlimVirgin, it would still hurt SlimVirgin.

So Kato created the account PrivacyIsAll, and then he asked Wikipedia Review user Jonny Cache to create the account Flawed and Irresponsible Research Tool. Kato of course knew that Flawed and Irresponsible Research Tool would be exposed immediately as an abusive sock puppet of Jonny Cache. So he asked Jonny Cache to use Flawed and Irresponsible Research Tool in an abusive way, so that it would be caught, and at the same time opposing PrivacyIsAll.

So it was a set up. Anyone who opposed PrivacyIsAll would be doing the right thing, but they would then be accused of supporting a banned user, which is a bad thing. It would muddy the waters significantly.

And of course out of all of this we on Wikipedia Review were asked not to expose his little scheme to anyone. Its all out in the open now, so I can do it. But at the time, I was asked to lie about it, so as to hide what was going on. So I did my bit and diligently stated that Privatemusings was SlimVirgin, even after we discovered positively that it was really Thebainer, an entirely different person. I of course couldn't say that it was Thebainer because then I would be betraying Kato.

But Kato took his little play acting a little too far, and he used it to pretend in the private trusted users forum that I was betraying him, while in public he used it to pretend that I was making things up and being an idiot. Thus Kato turned everyone on the forum against me. A brilliant set up. A great lie.

And so in the wash up, Privacyisall got caught, and an earlier account that Kato had created, that was used by multiple Wikipedia Review users, the fake Wikipedia administrator account CBOrgatrope, was also banned, as was a whole bunch of other accounts, which may or may not have had anything to do with any of this.

Ultimately, however, Wikipedia administrators figured it out. Perhaps they had seen Kato's blog post (which he then removed immediately afterwards and deleted his whole blog), or perhaps they had simply figured it out thanks to the deductive skills of William Petri. In the end it doesn't really matter. They've figured out most of it. And hence I can happily expose it all in this blog post without any fears that I am doing the wrong thing.

And in the end, this led to a Wikipedia administrator called JzG, who many Wikipedia Review users think is abusive (although personally I disagree) banning Private Musings unfairly, a ban that led JzG to get a lot of criticism, as he didn't realise that he too was being set up by Kato. Ultimately the ban was overturned, Jimbo got involved, and it became a major discussion on the Wikipedia mailing lists.

All because Kato decided to lie a little to try to goad SlimVirgin in to admitting that Private Musings was her, and to hurt her. Oh, and in the meantime to hurt me and make me look bad on Wikipedia Review.

And some people think that it is a good thing that he did this. At best it was fun. But only if you think that it is fun to hurt innocent people. If you think that SlimVirgin deserves it, then perhaps it can be justified. But what about JzG? The 6 or 7 innocent people who he got banned? What about all of the people on Wikipedia and Wikipedia Review who got manipulated over it?

And of course, what about me?

Yeah Kato, I am sorry to say it but I think that this whole thing brought Wikipedia Review in to disrepute. I think it was an awful thing to do.

Note: This was originally posted in early November 2007, but was temporarily hidden in the vain hope that I would be unbanned/unhacked from Wikipedia Review.  Now that the injustice is confirmed, this can be returned to its rightful place.

I went to log in to Wikipedia Review this afternoon and it wouldn't let me log in.  It told me to enter my username and password, and I did, and it said wrong username and password.  So I tried a few variations of my password (in case I'd used a different one) but none of them worked.  So I clicked on send me a new password, and I didn't get an e-mail.  So I clicked on create a new account, and of course I have to wait for moderator approval, which could take a week or so.  Then I went on to the blog to post about how Wikipedia had won a French defamation case, but it wouldn't let me on there either.  When I tried to enter the e-mail there, it said that it was the wrong e-mail.

So someone has changed my password and e-mail address there.

So there's 2 options - either I've been banned or else someone has hacked my account.

If I've been banned, its pretty major news, although I wonder if Somey is just giving me an enforced holiday, and all will be fine again in a week or so. 

I don't think that they've made any big posts about it though.

Kato announced that he left late last night, and made a snide comment about me being poisonous, and saying that he was going to create a new forum (well a blog series I think) that would replace Wikipedia Review, and he hoped that the better members of the forum, which he said was 98% of them, would come with him.  I responded (perhaps foolishly) to say that I welcomed the idea of a second forum, as we have for years needed a new forum.  I thought that that was a very positive thing to say.  But 2 people who I have had very positive relations with, KamrynMatika and Nathan, both said that that was a very nasty thing to say !!!!

Not only is that just utterly confusing, upside down world kind of thing (as in, he is allowed to attack me so viciously, but me saying positive things about it leads to me getting told I am a bastard) but its really just plain awful. 

I really can't handle people who I trust betraying me, or turning on me, or things like that.  Not in bulk like that.  Amongst the general awfulness that everyone feels about that kind of thing, it also has a personal reason for me - because it reminds me of the worst element of what happened with Rob.

The worst element isn't that someone was trying to kill me - thats bad, but you get over it.  The worst element wasn't even that he was going to get away with it - that's bad and it doesn't go away because there's no resolution, but that's not the worst element.  The worst element is that my entire family and all of my friends and those closest to me turned against me over it.  I don't know how many of them were aware of what was going on, or how many were simply naive and gullible, and conned about the whole thing.  But they were all against me.  That was the worst part of it.

And whilst sure people doing it to say savage things about me on Wikipedia Review forums is not in the same league as people helping to kill me, and costing many other lives in the year or so that follows, its still pretty awful and it just reminds me of the whole thing.  Its like a trigger, and it was seriously upsetting.

So I guess in some ways its a good thing to not be able to go on to Wikipedia Review for a while.

But at the same time, uh, its pretty wrong I think. 

I guess we will wait to see if I have been hacked.  If I have been hacked, they should just make me a new account.  If its an enforced break, someone should send me a message about it.  They should let me know what has happened at some point in time.

Ultimately, well, its pretty nasty to be banned from your own place, especially when its done because of a supreme jerk like Kato, but you know it doesn't matter all that much.  Its not that big a deal.  I mean ultimately I can make comments here instead.

Note: This was originally posted in November 2007, but was temporarily deleted in the vain hope of getting my ban/hacking from Wikipedia Review lifted.  I return it to its rightful place now, after the injustice has now been finalised.

A short time ago I took issue with a person on Wikipedia Review named Kato, in particular because he had decided to insist that everyone who didn't realise that the term "child grooming" is used in everyday speech to mean "a paedophile trying to groom a child so that they can later rape them" is an idiot, and had bullied a lot of people in relation to this.  When I tried to defend the people who were being harassed, which included a lot of our long term posters, I too got abused.  Then Jorge, who I had had minor disagreements with previously, decided to then quote some things that I had said about Rob, the guy who ruined my life, and insist that I was talking about myself, and that I was a real danger because I was that bad.  Oh and while all of that was going on Guy decided to bash me for the fact that Poetlister had backstabbed me, although that was a comparatively minor thing.

So here are my musings about it.

Kato was a relatively new person to Wikipedia Review, and we don't know who he is for real, or even his Wikipedia identity.  We let him in to the "Anti Cabal" group, which is kind of like our "not quite admins but are trusted enough to share secrets with" groups, who get access to one extra hidden forum.  I was fine with him getting in to that group.  But then less than a week after getting in to that group Somey decided to promote him to admin.  Now there is no actual structure for how to promote someone to admin, Somey can simply do that on his own perogative, but the reality is that this was far too quick.

So this led to Kato having far too much power far too quickly, and naturally the power went to his head.  So he decided to bash people and say "I am better than you" to the other regular people who were on the fringe of getting in to the Anti-Cabal group (The fieryangel and LamontStormstar) to try to push them down so that they weren't treated as well.  And then I suppose he went after me because in the end he has more actual power than me too.  In reality, the problem was that he was promoted too quickly and he shouldn't have been.

As for Jorge, well, while I was away for a year Selina decided to ban Jorge, who had previously been in the Anti-Cabal group.  I don't know why he was banned, but the reality was that he was banned for several months.  6 months?  I'm not sure how long.  Anyway Somey decided to let him back in, which is all fine and good, but he let him back in straight in to the trusted group.  Now I am sorry but if someone is banned they don't come straight back in as a trusted person.  He should have been let in as a regular user first.

As for Poetlister, well, she was made admin by Lir when she had about 5 posts to her name, and has barely used it since.  She doesn't really power trip, but she is hardly a respected or even regular member of the forum.  I don't really care what she says either way.  And I am quite sick of her going on about how she was not abusing sock puppets, especially when Encyclopedia Dramatica proved that she was (at least when using their forums). 

Supposedly this was all over, but then a few weeks ago I discovered a new account on Wikipedia called Privatemusings, who seemed to be somewhat suspicious.  They said that they were a sock puppet account (a second alias of a regular user) and they had created a new policy as a kind of backdoor version of "BADSITES", a policy to try to ban from Wikipedia certain web sites that they don't like (like Wikipedia Review).  So this seemed to me to be pretty darn suspicious and I wondered if it was SlimVirgin, or if not her then someone else quite powerful.

Now, my idea was initially rubbished, which was really nasty considering it had a lot of merit.  Then a lot of people supported it, and it was determined amongst members that it was probably MONGO or Essjay.  So when it came time to write a blog post summarising that and many other posts on our forums, I included that information.  Then Kato decides that I am hurting the site by producing false information on a blog post!  The fucking moron!  Well I am sorry, but I am producing what we have said on our forums.  So he makes a big song and dance about it, how its wrong, how its not proven, and so forth.  So what is the correction?  Oh wait he doesn't have one.  And the fact that I am merely repeating what others have said, with a big disclaimer, doesn't seem to dawn on him.  Instead he just decides to bash me over it.

So then I say well maybe its SlimVirgin, something that he has hinted towards.  No no I am not allowed to say that either.  Even though it was my original claim, and he had said "Its not MONGO or Essjay, its more likely SlimVirgin!" I still get bashed over it.  I get told that I am a moron, and Jorge jumps in to say "We've been telling you for ages that it couldn't possibly be SlimVirgin".  Yes, you did, and then you told me it was.  So make up your fucking mind!

The reality is that I am putting in detailed research, and they are doing nothing but yell and scream, and quite frankly destroy the whole thing.

Now, in my opinion Jorge should be kicked out of Anti-Cabal and see if he is voted in properly, given that he was banned beforehand.  And Kato should lose his moderator status, and go back to Anti-Cabal, at least until he has had some time to see if he can be stable and sensible enough.

But the sickening element of this is that not only hasn't this happened, but they are getting support to carry on like this.  People are just saying nothing.

It makes me feel like I don't want to even be there anymore. 

Power corrupts.

Now that I'm starting to figure out how to use MySpace properly, I am heading towards using that one primarily.  So if you don't already know the address for that one, it is http://myspace.com/blissyu2

Whilst MSN Spaces is easier to use, you can't embed photos easily, writing html code in it messes up, and generally a lot of things don't work properly.  MySpace is tons more powerful.  And of course everyone has MySpace.  Every celebrity, politician, musician, TV or movie star has one.  So even if you don't want to use it to be sociable, you can use it to just watch celebrity blogs.  Its got tons of neat things about it.

I think that I will keep this blog up, but primarily to communicate with people on my MSN Messenger list, and also perhaps use it to talk about Wikipedia and such (which was my original purpose to this blog).  I may even over time delete the entries in here that aren't Wikipedia-specific.  And of course, depending on what happens with the current Wikipedia Review drama, I may just use this entirely to discuss Wikipedia issues.  But of course I am expecting it to sort out soon.  I hope.

Anyway I just thought I would pass this message on.

I am still bouncy that Tarisai talked to me on MSN tonight.

On the internet we get some situations where we need a lot of security - after all, we might get hacked.  And when you pay a significant amount of money towards creating your own web domain and then hiring expensive forum software, you want to make darn sure that nobody can hack it.  So you want a fair amount of security.  But when that security prevents you from being able to use your own forum, then there is a problem.

Yesterday Selina from Wikipedia Review decided to create her own domain name to act as a mirror for a post on one of her favourite game forums - Hells Gate or some such.  In registering, she accidentally linked the domain name to Wikipedia Review . com, a forum which I own but she helped me to set up. 

This would all be fine IF I still had access to the e-mail address that I used to set up WikipediaReview.com.  The problem is that that e-mail address belongs to my old ISP, which expired in July last year - OVER A YEAR AGO.  It doesn't even exist anymore.  So they send out all of this important information to nowhere, and it just vanishes in to thin air.  See, if I still had access to that e-mail address, then it would be simple enough for me to forward it on to Selina and all is fine.

But because that e-mail address doesn't exist, they had this long and complicated set of forms that I had to wade through to try to verify that I am the person who owns it.  So I had to photograph my drivers license, and sign it, amongst other things.  I had to print out their form, then scan it in with my drivers license in the middle, and my signature, and then send it back as an attachment to them.

So I did all of that, and you would think that that was enough.  Nope!  Not enough by far!

They sent me back an e-mail just then to say that for Wikipedia Review.com I need to provide legal documents to prove the business name.  Uh, hello, its not a legal business!  They wanted tax receipts and everything.  It doesn't make money, it doesn't receive donations, nothing, zilch, not relevant.  They also didn't recognise my drivers license because they demand it is an American drivers license!  Uh, idiots, I am not frigging in America!

Then for the other one, they sent me back a thing saying that I am not the owner of that.  So now I'll need Selina to fill stuff in.

And remember, we are doing all of this because Selina messed up by filling in the optional part that said "Do you want this attached to any other domain names?" and she put in wikipediareview.com.  And secondly because it still has my old e-mail address there.

I mean seriously guys, too much security!  We have all of the numbers, all of the passwords, my full name, everything else.  Why not let us just fix this little problem?  Its just absurd really.

Anyway, just as a side note there, they at least recognised me as the current owner of wikipediareview.com . lol.  Apparently that's in dispute!

Toxicpink.net, the web site that published the results of my court case against Julie in early 2003, has been shut down, as of September 2007.  Not only that, but they have also blocked the web archive machine, so you can't see earlier versions of the pages either.  So because of this, some people can now quite happily believe lies about the case.  You see, whilst Julie's original smears were forcibly taken down, some of the mirrors were not.  And then people that might want to smear my name, can link to the mirrors of the smears, and without me having the Toxicpink page for them to refer them to, they can lie to their heart's content about me, and make a fresh smear campaign.  And if you think that getting a smear campaign to end is hard the first time around, try getting a copy of a smear campaign taken down!  Virtually impossible.

Luckily, for the moment at least, the google cache is still active, but only for the site.  Here are some relevant pages:

• Google site search (if this isn't working, its gone for good)
• The Julie Wilkinson story (the girl who defamed me and spread vicious lies about me being a paedophile etc)
• Thank Yous (with my real name on there)
• An e-mail from Julie to me
• A second e-mail from Julie to me
• A comment from Julie to me

Of course, it doesn't have a copy of the smear page itself that Julie wrote, and for what should be fairly obvious reasons I don't want it to.  There may be a copy of it somewhere on the web, and you may be able to find it if you are really interested.  It is hard to completely delete something, even with a court order.  But you can at least devalue it enough that people don't take it so seriously.

Toxicpink.net being shut down is a real problem for me.  I will aim to have copies of those pages published elsewhere.

Stuff it, Tarisai has spoiled me for all other music.  This was one of her best ones, which I didn't get to see live, because I hate Australian Idol and wasn't watching it at that stage as I didn't know she was on.  Enjoy:

  

She sang that song in response to the allegations by TV show Today Tonight that she, and other members of Hillsong Church, were rigging Australian Idol.  She was the favourite to win the competition at this stage, before that first smear campaign was released.  This was her video response, to prove that she was actually the best on merit.  Pity that the later smears stuck a bit more. 

MSN spaces won't let me embed YouTube videos (at least not as easily as MySpace), so you can just click on my MySpace blog to see my first ever video diary entry (not me in the video).  And whilst MSN spaces is ridiculously difficult to embed videos, I did find a guide which is moderately helpful, and enabled me to do it for one Tarisai video, for your pleasure:
 
 

I went to the movie marathon tonight (11.45pm-5.15am - 3 movies for the price of 1 1/2), which is always an experience.  After a lot of debate, we went to see the set that had 3 movies which neither of us had seen before.  Of the other 2 sets, 1 had 1 movie that we'd both seen, while the other had 1 movie that my sister had seen and a different movie which I had seen.  Whilst those two were probably better sets to see, we didn't want to pay good money to see something we'd already seen.

For the record, these were the sets:

Set 1: The Simpsons Movie (we'd both seen), Die Hard 4 (neither of us had seen 1,2 or 3), The Seeker (we had no idea about it)
Set 2: Resident Evil, Superbad, Good Luck Chuck (we hadn't seen or heard much about any of them)
Set 3: Evan Almighty (I wanted to see, my sister had already seen), Bourne Ultimatum (we'd both considered seeing it before, but hadn't), Chuck and Larry (I'd seen, and my sister wanted to see).

In the end we decided on Set 2.  We had previously decided to see Set 3, but the whole "but I've already seen it" part was too much to let go.  Besides which, we weren't sure that Bourne Ultimatum was going to be any good either.

I am not going to bother with a full review, just one paragraph on each.  I'll even start with a one liner:

Resident Evil: Pointless nudity, Pointless graphic violence, and very little plot.  Looked like a computer game.  No beginning or end, looked like part of a series of movies.  Didn't stand alone very well.
Superbad: Way too much swearing and sexual inneundo, particularly early.  Two kids who looked really unattractive and wrong.  Seemed to be teaching kids all of the wrong things.  Basically a teen flick.  Not the kind of movie you want to see with your sister. 
Good Luck Chuck: An older version of Superbad, basically.  Teen movie for grown ups?  Actually a fair bit better than the other two, and worth watching.  Lots of gratuitous nudity and sexual innuendo, but with a point.  Jessica Alba baby!  Lots of hot girls in it too, and naked, and sexy.  Was kind of like 50 first dates but with gratuitous nudity and skimmed over sex scenes (dozens and dozens of brief skimmed over sex scenes).

I was going to do a longer review, but heck its a movie marathon, and nobody really reads the long reviews that I make anyway.  I'm no movie critic, and I won't become one just by writing here.  People like brevity, and I suck at brevity, so I should try to work on it.

Really, in retrospect, we should have seen Set 3, even if it meant my sister sitting through Evan Almighty for a second time, me sitting through Chuck and Larry a second time, and seeing Bourne Ultimatum when we hadn't seen the first 2 Bourne movies (Bourne Identity and Bourne Supremacy I think they were called).

But hey its an experience.

I must say that I felt uncomfortable given that about 1/2 of the audience (in an MA15+ only set of movies) were aged 13-16 (quite a lot of underage people there), and I don't think there was anyone there much over 18 - besides me of course.  Also most people were there in couples.  While they don't really sound like it, they were movies that you take your girlfriend to.  And I was there with my sister.  Ah well.  Better than going alone, hey.

My mother is a pretty funny person.  Just then she did something worthy of a comedy routine.  I even said to her what the comedy routine would be like, and it ended up kind of Jerry Seinfeld style.  So I just have to write this down, and share it with the world.  Think of Jerry Seinfeld and how he does standup when you read this:

Its lucky that I wrote that one down when I did.  I almost forgot it already!

Do you think its funny?  The funny thing is that she actually does it.  We were at the movie marathon and my sister wrote her a message asking to be picked up, and all that she got in response was "j".  My mum does this kind of thing all of the time.  She uses the predictive text thing on mobile phones, and it often guesses the wrong words.  My mum is too lazy to fix it up, so she just leaves it in a messed up state.  Half of her messages are gobbledy gook.  But today was a real classic, getting "j". Back.

My sister: "The movie marathon has finished now.  We are waiting outside the cinema.  Can you pick us up?"
My mum: "j"

Actually, come to think of it I could probably write a comedy routine just based on her laziness with mobile phones.

I could probably have a whole act just based on my mum, and the thing is that she probably wouldn't mind too much either.  Of course, I'd ask her first to make sure she was okay with it.  She makes fun of herself sometimes.

Here's another one:

Anyway, I can go on for ages about my mother, both funny stuff, not so funny stuff, and I guess some things that I really shouldn't be writing here, and I won't because she might read it.  This blog is public, and even though nobody much reads it, they might read it, so I have to be mindful of that.

Anyway, I thought that people might like that joke, if they stumble upon this blog.  I've been writing too much negative stuff lately, so I've decided to put some nicer things in there.

Now I am not for a moment suggesting that there was any truth to the Today Tonight story that suggested that the Hillsong Church had rigged Australian Idol by mass-voting for members of their church and affiliated churches, but I wanted to do my own research to determine if there is any truth to it at all.

I discovered that Tarisai Vuche was a member of ShireLive, who Today Tonight insist are affiliated with the Hillsong Church.  Indeed, Matt Corby is also a member of ShireLive.  So I did a google search for ShireLive.

Here is the ShireLive Church web site.

You will notice a few important things about the web site:

1. For a Church web site, they sure do focus an awful lot on music.  Where is the Christianity push?  It almost seems like it is a jam session with a side course of faith.
2. They have 2 YouTube videos on the site itself, and links to a PodCast.  I know that we are in the modern age now, but that's just crazy.
3. There is a picture of a black girl in the corner who looks African and may well have something to do with Tarisai.  I wished that it was Tarisai, but it doesn't look like her.  Perhaps they actually should have a picture of Tarisai there.
4. They link to "Hillsong Live" - the Hillsong Church that Today Tonight insisted was affiliated.  Indeed, they are affiliated, and are mentioned on the main page, with a link.
5. They link off to their own music sub section, which you can click on.

Off to the music sub section:

http://www.shirelive.com/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=524&tabindex=6

Here you can listen to music.  And whilst Tarisai may well be singing in that section, to date there are no songs by Tarisai.

So I am thinking - wow maybe Today Tonight were on to something!

I mean this "church" seems to be a record company in disguise.  They obviously have very good singers in there, outstanding singers (I am sorry, but Tarisai is by far the best singer that has ever been on Australian Idol, and Matt Corby is pretty good too), and these singers are volunteering at the church and for the most part not being paid (although you can buy the music, and perhaps they get something out of the sales, although most likely it just goes back to the church).  So why not get these singers on to a competition, and then support them, and help them to get in to an actual career?

One rather famous gospel singer who went mainstream was Celine Dion, who as of right now is statistically either the most popular singer of all time, or in the top 3 (depending on which version of the statistics you agree with), shared with Mariah Carey and someone else whose name I forget right now.  Amy Grant and others also went mainstream too.

So is this the conspiracy?  That a church, who focuses heavily on music, has decided to get some of their best singers to try out for Australian Idol, and then asked their congregation to vote for them? 

If you don't believe that they are getting people to pray for them, I found at least one blog post by a member of Shire Live church who was writing to ask people to pray for Tarisai Vuche and Matt Corby:

Pray For Matt Corby and Tarisai Vuche from Australian Idol

And why should this guy be asking people to pray for them?  Because they are Christians?  That is in itself asking to rig the votes.

But again this all gets back to the fact that people will always be representative of a demographic.

Tarisai Vuche isn't just Tarisai Vuche, an anonymous singer.  She is Tarisai Vuche, the Zimbabwean, the non-Australian in Australian Idol, the black person, the female, the 20 year old, the university student, the psychology student, the ex-receptionist, the person who works in her mother's store, the Christian, and the member of Shire Live church, who is affiliated with Hillsong Church and was smeared by Today Tonight.  Of course, more recently we can add Tarisai Vuche who a radio caller to 2DayFM said was fake, and this led to irresponsible comments by judges Mark Holden and Ian Dicko Dickson.  And now she is Tarisai who blew up at judges for being called fake.

So given all of that, is it a bad thing for the churches to try to ask people to vote for people who go there?  Only some people will do it. 

And all of this leads me to believe that in fact Today Tonight, while not entirely wrong, were misleading the public about what was going on.  Where they were insisting that the whole thing was rigged, in reality it was just that a few really good singers were coming out and being supported by people who knew them and knew the quality of their singing.  And now Australian Idol, its CEO, and their judges, have gone to lengths to try to get rid of any hint of controversy.

But this also has a silver lining.

See Shire Live obviously acts as a Recording Company in itself.  They produce records.  What is to stop them from producing an album sang entirely by Tarisai Vuche?  She could launch her recording career from there, even if nobody else would do it.  They could have it on their web site, and people would buy it.  If Matt Corby gets voted off in a similar way, they could do it with him too.  So she has a chance.

I wrote to Shire Live's web masters and suggested it.  I think that they can start her off doing that.  Because right now she needs to get something out there, to prove that she can really do it.

I would love to see her release a single just before the Australian Idol finale, one which slams the judges and perhaps the whole competition, a revenge song.  It'd be a number 1 hit if it was done right.  Have that booming voice of her combined with nasty yet accurate attacks, and it becomes a masterpiece.

Singing like Whitney Houston's "I will always love you" she could say how bad they were, how they criticised her for being fake, yet allowed the ultra fake Natalie to get away with murder, how she was kind and considerate and then was goaded in to an attack, and then they say that she's fake AND reacted too much - yet she was supposedly fake for not reacting enough!

It'd be perfect.  Do it with gospel harmonies, by a poignant message.  Have something about how the Hillsong Church isn't rigging anything, about Today Tonight being terrible, and so forth.

But do it in a way that its not slander, of course.

And make it sound good.

Its a masterpiece just waiting to be written.

We went to garage sales this morning, the second time I've gone on garage sales, and really as a continuation of the first time.  I was looking for a stereo system (2 tape decks, CD player and a good quality radio, and a pretty large system with good speakers too), a set of drawers (or basically anything to put stuff in that would at the same time "create space") and another VCR (the last one I got didn't work).

We went along to the first place and got a VCR for $5.  With a remote control.  I will wait and see if it actually turns on.  I am yet to test it.

Then we got a heater for my sister.  This was a tough one.  She asked for a heater, and we had a choice of 3, uber good quality ones.  Two that are room heaters, one small for $15 and one medium for $30, but I wasn't convinced that either of them was big enough for her.  Alternatively there was a small one to put in front of your feet for $15.  So we decided to get the small one, as the others were too small for the kind that they were. 

Then I went somewhere and saw this beautiful set of drawers, one large set and 2 small ones, that just looked perfect, $60 for the lot, so I just ate them up.  We had a lot of trouble fitting them in the car though, but hey. 

Then we went back home and unloaded, and it was even more difficult moving it.  The set of drawers looked fantastic, but then I had to get rid of the dressing table, which also means no mirror in my room.  I put it in to the rumpus room, only it looks a bit silly there now.  It just takes up so much room and isn't useful.  I have far too much stuff and far too little room to be able to accommodate such a thing.

Then we went out for the last big one that we'd decided to go to.  This one was enormous, some kind of a church fundraiser I think.  They had actual stereos.  I saw one that looked reasonable, and I was looking to see if it was okay.  Only a mere $7, albeit without speakers, and I was trying to decide whether it was worth it.  I wanted to test it, but without speakers it was tough.  Of course buying speakers is an expensive business, which could make the whole purchase somewhat pointless.  Anyway, while I was looking at it some old guy, about 70 or 75 or so, just moved up close to me, so I stood up to let him move past, and he moved right in front of me and looked at the stereo.  I said to him "Excuse me, what are you doing?" and he picked it up and said "I am taking this".  I said "Hang on, I was just looking at that, you can't do that" and he said "Well, I was looking at it 20 minutes ago, so now I am taking it".

It was so rude I felt like punching him out, but of course we were at a church fundraiser and he was 70 or 75 or so.  But what a rude sod.  We left pretty much immediately after that, and it was tempting to run him over on the way home.  He even walked right in front of the car.  We could have just woops had an accident and there you go.  Swipe the $7 thing and that's it.

Anyway then we went to one last one on the way home, and this one had these amazingly comfortable ottomans that I fell in love with.  I'd always wondered what ottomans were.  If you are like me and didn't know, they are little foot stools that are really comfortable and you can sit on them.  So comfortable, I felt like melting in to them.  But of course they are totally impractical for anything beyond a little moan every now and again.

They had another heater, and even though we'd already got one, we asked about this one.  This one was another room heater, and it was bigger than the other ones.  They came back with a price of $20 and I said lets get it, but then we left and had an argument as to whether we should.  On one hand we already had one, this one was older looking (slightly) than the other for $30, and it might not be much good.  On the other hand, this is a really big one and would easily heat up a large room, and even if my sister took the other one, that one would heat up our whole lounge room, and we could do with an extra heater.  We have far too few heaters in this house, and it gets so cold.  So we got that one.

Then after that we decided to pop in to Harvey Norman for their computer sale on the way home.

I know the prices and what things are worth, and quite frankly this was a pretend sale.  It was 5-10% off only and the prices began ridiculously inflated.  It was the "Christmas is coming soon, let's jack our prices up" sale.  They also had new stock coming and this lot was redundant.  It was about double to triple the price of what the same stuff costs over the internet.  The pushy sales people were a bit of a worry too.  I kept trying to get them to leave us alone but they kept buzzing around like flies. 

I also looked at stereos, knowing that for the quality I want you can get them elsewhere for $150-$200, or perhaps as low as $100 (although we have to check if that was right).  Their cheapest price was $439.  Sorry mate but that's just wrong. 

I wonder how they can stay in business with such uncompetitive prices.

I mean you think Harvey Norman and you think that it is a discount store.  It sounds like one.  But this is just overly priced all over the place.

Unless you live in a big city (and only in certain cities) you should never buy a computer from a store.  Its just too pricey.  Get them off e-bay from a reputable dealer, or from a reputable store online, or even in parts if you know what you are doing (although every time I tried to do that it ended up cheaper to buy a package pre-built).  Some people can spend $4,000 or $5,000 buying it in a store for what you can get online for $1,500.  So many people wasting so much money.

You do get a good feeling when you get a good deal on something though, and that good feeling stays with you for the duration of owning it.

Similarly, if you got ripped off, you feel ripped off the entire time that you have it.

It wouldn't work on Windows XP, it wouldn't work on Windows 98, it wouldn't work with the torrent download, it wouldn't work with the fake CD (daemon tools), it wouldn't work when I bought the original CD, and it wouldn't even work with Dosbox from Abandonia.  But then in a last ditch attempt, I did a search for stonekeep winxp (Windows XP) to see if someone had tips for getting it to work on Windows XP.  That gave me this beautiful link. 

I'll quote it:

This gem needs to be highlighted.  The key part is the -label stonkeep.  Everything else was stuff I'd figured out already.

The thing is that first off with the fake CD you have to stuff around with a thing called an ISO that acts as a fake CD, and then you have to use daemon tools and so forth.  That's all good and fine, but it still doesn't work, because of copyright protections.  But Windows XP also hates DOS games and won't run them so you need to use a thing called DOSBOX.  But if you use DOSBOX, the copyright protections come in.  So you need to actual label the virtual drive what the actual CD drive is labeled, in order to get around it.  So you label it stonkeep, which is the name of the CD.

Of course, if I'd done that then I probably could have done it with the torrent and the fake CD.  I am tempted to try that too.

Also I found out that you can use ALT+ENTER to make the game full screen.  There I was trying ALT+F4 but it wasn't working.  Oh well. 

The game was like the holy grail.  It works finally.  Yay! 

Also the Might and Magic Xeen game works much better full screen, and I worked out how to make new characters, so I don't have to put up with the hopeless standard ones.

Anyway, well it was good to have that work.  Some good news for once.  The internet is really good for helping with games.

Oh and Zork is just as annoying as Hitchhikers, but not as funny.  Well, not quite as annoying, but pretty annoying.  And why do I want to play a game that I need a walkthrough to win? 

Oh and you can get Stonekeep full version without needing to go through torrents here:
http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=2527

More tips here:
http://www.dosgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10232

Pity that Google doesn't easily pick all of this up.

When I went to visit my girlfriend recently she had on her computer a new game called Virtual Villager.  She promised to copy it for me, but it looked to me like I could download it.  I could, but only the trial version (she had the full version) and sadly it doesn't work on this computer.  So I recalled a similar game to it that was a bit older called Cultures.  So I downloaded Cultures 1 and Cultures 2.  Cultures 1 actually works better because you can load and save it and it has 4 tutorials (it is still a demo version though as you don't have missions).  Cultures 2 has more things you can do, but I have preferred to play Cultures 1 at least until I get used to it.  They are simulations where you build your own society.  A bit like Age of Empires but without the hassle of having enemies.  At least in the demo version there are no enemies.  There probably are in the real game.  But oh so much cuter! 

Anyway doing this led me to think of going to look through Abandonware to see if there was anything similar out there in a full version.  After looking through a few Abandonware sites, I looked at Abandonia, the site recommended by Age of Heroes (the heroes of might and magic home site, which is as good for HOMM as CricInfo is to cricket).  I downloaded a thing called The Lost Tribes, which promised to be a free version of it.  It wasn't quite the same, but hey.  Then I downloaded Zork, Zork 2, Might and Magic, Might and Magic 2, Might and Magic 3, Might and Magic Xeen (4 and 5 combined) and Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Then I tried to get Xeen to work, as I have that on disc (part of the RPG pack that I bought back in 1997 and was old then), but it wouldn't work, so I checked out what Abandonia says you need to do to get it to work (they are very helpful with such things) and it said to run a thing called DOSBOX.  This was actually really complicated to get to work, and I had to follow the step by step walkthrough as it wasn't exactly obvious.  Anyway once there, hey presto there it is.  Sadly its in a windowed version and I have to go through DOSBOX every single time.  Then I ran Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy and that had to go through a text editor called WinFrotz, but then that worked too, which was a lot less painful than DOSBOX.  Of course Heroes I had to go through Daemon Tools, which isn't exactly easy either.  So then I thought hey - I wonder if I can get Stonekeep to work.  I have even bought the disc off E-bay.  But sadly nothing can get Stonekeep to work.  It remains a mystery, and hence I am all the more keen to get it to work.  From memory it was quite a good game, but it was a while ago.  I struggle to find hints online for how to get it to work.

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is very precise, as you die and the game is over after about 10 moves if you do the wrong thing.  And I mean you have to do exactly the right thing.  You really have to know the movie/book.  He gets out of bed with a splitting headache, puts on his gown, gets a headache tablet, gets a few things from the bench, leaves the house, picks up some mail, and there is a bulldozer trying to run down the house!  And of course he lies down in front of the bulldozer.  You have to do that or else you die.  Doing anything else will kill you.  But then you are trapped if you lie down.  So you then have to wait for the guy to come by, and when he offers a towel you follow him.  You don't take the towel or else you die.  Staying in front of the bulldozer and you die too, when the world is destroyed. 

Of course, once you've followed him it gets a bit easier, although getting off earth is tough too.  At the precise moment when he hitch hikes (and he doesn't help you), he drops the device, you have to pick it up immediately and press green. Phew!

Then it gets easier, or at least you aren't going to die every second.  I did look at a walkthrough just so that I could get that far, because it is really annoying.

The game has history for me as it was the first game that I ever bought, back in 1982 I think (it came out in 1981 so that sounds right), and I could never get past the bulldozer thing.  They didn't have web pages then (they came out in 1993 or so really) and of course the internet whilst technically existing in reality was so expensive and only had file transfer so only really rich people had it.  So no walkthrough back then.  And yet it was a really expensive game.  It had annoyed me so much that I'd paid $75 for it and it had about 10 seconds of game time.  So now I can do it.  I am trying to do it without using the walkthrough too much too.  Its still annoying either way though.  And it is so very precise.  If you do something even slightly wrong then its game over.  Oh so annoying.  Badly made really.

I also played Xeen at least for a little while.  I managed to win the first quest, but then I can't remember it being that annoying.  I think I won the game before, or at least the side 1 game, but that was on my old computer which would let me run it straight off the CD.  This whole DOSBOX nonsense is just annoying.

And Cultures I was doing just then but then it crashed my computer.  I figured out that they get experience points and that its a lot better to have an equal number of men and women, even though women don't do anything other than take care of the home, because if you have all guys (or mostly guys) then they are all unhappy and keep starving to death.  Women keep them happy and provide food for them.  So I did that.  I still can't figure out how to get a tool shed though.  Maybe I'll try again. 

Sometimes I think its good to have an old computer and old games because then its cheaper and even free sometimes.  Mind you, all of these games that don't work without a heck of a lot of effort is super annoying.  Old games should just work straight up in my opinion.

Its a bit like how you can only get DVD players now, but a lot of the old movies are only out on videos.

It will be a long time before I throw out my VCRs. 

I am just so upset that that chat thing with Tarisai didn't work.  That was my last chance to connect, and maybe at least she'd answer my messages, even if its not quite the same thing as talking to her face to face.  The last time I had something like that happen was when Sunil Gavaskar, the great Indian batsman, answered me on a CricInfo IRC message (although I am not 100% certain it was actually him - but they did say on CricInfo's main page that it was, so it seems pretty likely).  It would have been pretty special.  But sadly when I went on at the exact same time that I was meant to go on, it was already over.  Unless they meant 4.30pm my time, in which case why didn't the chat program work then?  Oh I don't know what they were doing.  Perhaps they thought I was on South Australian time still?  Who knows.  It is disappointing just the same.

Because I don't watch Australian Idol, I had missed the first 10 performances by her, so I have been trying to catch up on the internet.  There's still quite a lot from her that I hadn't heard.  It slows the internet down to a crawl every time that I try to look though.  It does seem sad though that she is being abused as badly as that gay guy on the first season of Big Brother, who they insisted was back stabbing everyone.  But in her case all that it is is that she didn't listen to the judges very well, or didn't agree with their comments.  I mean what is wrong with being polite?  Quite frankly she was the best, and by a wide, wide margin.  Oh sure the others were okay, they were even good, and the reality is that a lot of very average (even bad) singers make a lot of money in the music industry.  There are some that have amazing voices that also make it, but some with amazing voices don't do all that well at all.  It's not just about the voice.  You think of some of the most amazing voices in the music industry and you inevitably look at Mariah Carey, the one with the 8 octave range.  Sure, she is probably the equal most popular singer in the world of all time (in terms of sales), shared with Celine Dion (there is a big debate over this actually), but it wasn't a guarantee that she was going to do well.  When she first started off, it took a fair while for her to do well, even longer for her to make an impact on a worldwide stage. 

But there are groups like The Offspring, where the guy can't sing to save himself, and where the average guy off the street could sing better, and they make hits.  Every single person in the top 100 on Australian Idol could outsing them.  But he had a gimmick, and he took advantage of his inability to sing properly, and all was good.  There have been plenty of people who couldn't sing very well that have done very well.

And the reality is that the people who were left there, when I watched the 2 full episodes, in the top 6 and the top 5, were all average singers.  Well, 3 of them were slightly below average, 2 of them were slightly above average, and Tarisai was well above average, in comparison to the average popular singer.  Tarisai was up there with the best 10 or so singers going around in the world.  Marty and Matt were up there with the likes of Creed, Garbage, Matchbox 20, Good Charlotte, and other pretty decent singers like that.  Natalie, Daniel and (spew) Carl were down there in the realms of The Veronicas, slightly worse than The Corrs, Michael Bolton, and a number of decidedly average singers.

But if you look at the people who have won Australian Idol in the past, most of them have been pretty darn average.  What was so great about Guy Sebastian?  He was very average.  He wasn't as good as Marty or Matt, and he couldn't hold a candle to Tarisai.  Indeed, Guy Sebastian was nowhere near as good as Shannon Noll - he just had better hair.  And while I don't know who else was in that competition, and how good they were, there is every chance that some of them were better too.

So can we expect for Tarisai to have a career in the music industry now, as someone who finished 5th?  First sure, second maybe, third they might get one hit, and beyond that there have been instances of a career.  But what does she have going for her?  Oh yeah, everyone said she was the best singer, and she was the favourite to win it when we went in to the top 12.  She had the range, and she had made the fewest faults.  But she kept a bit in reserve, and while it was a tiny little criticism that the judges made, because her performances were virtually faultless, she basically ignored it.  She refused to accept that it was there.  Until the final performance, when she finally put it in.  And because of that people said she was fake.  Not that her singing was fake, but that her interviews were fake.

I mean how can your singing be fake?  Because you don't put in emotion?  Get real, what singer puts in emotion every single time that they sing?  If they do, it'd sound different every time.  Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.  They certainly can't put in the same emotion to a song every time that they sing it - that's just ludicruous.  If they are doing that, then they are faking it.  It'll happen just occasionally.  Unless they just think a little bit about it.  Its just stupid to suggest that she was fake when she was singing.  What were the others doing that was any different?  Carl pretending to be sexy?  Natalie slowly walking up on to a piano to fake Chrissie Amphlet?  Or Natalie how she performed every single song, stripping the life out of it?  Or how about Matt pretending to be macho and manly, instead of his usual effeminate self?  Or hey Marty when he pretended that his stuffing up the song was emotion?

But will that be what people remember her by?  If she releases a single, will she be lauded in the press?  Will they all say "Here comes whinger girl?"

Or will that work in her favour?  Its an interesting prospect.  A record producer would say "Yes, you were easily the best singer on Australian Idol, but if you want to work with me, you are going to have to listen.  You are going to have to do things my way.  You aren't the winner, you came 5th.  You are going to have to sing the way that I want you to sing.  If you don't, then I won't sign you up."

And she'll do it.  And she'll produce something, and it will be a real bash at the judges, and people will say she's a whinger.  But then the reality is that Australia loves a whinger, and it will sell.  Australia hates an arrogant person who is just too good, they suffer from "toll poppy syndrome" where everyone wants to bash them.  But once bashed, if they come out swinging, Australia loves them. 

She sure created publicity with her attacks on the judges (and this coming from them insisting that she didn't show any real emotion - pah!) and of course earlier we all knew that she was the best.

Anyway it'll be interesting to see what happens.  Check back in about a year and maybe something will have happened.  Or maybe just a few months.  If she wants to time it perfectly, release the first single the day before the final of Australian Idol.  Perfect time to rub it in them.

http://www.australianidol.com.au/idol-live-text-chat.html

I discovered this link which was to a live text chat with the latest Australian Idol to be kicked off, the wonderful Tarisai Vuche.  It said "Check back at 4.30pm".  The problem is that it didn't say whether that was 4.30pm my time, or 4.30pm Eastern Standard Time (which is the time for 90% of the country).  So in other words I had to sit there at 4.30pm my time right through to 5.30pm my time.  So I did.

At 4.30pm nothing worked.  At 4.40pm nothing worked.  At 4.50pm nothing worked.  So I just figured that it must mean Eastern Standard Time, which of course makes more sense.  So I checked back at 5.20pm and it worked.  Woo hoo!  I was in!  Only when I went in, there was Tarisai talking already!  Wow, I'd really get to talk to her!  But then at the end it had an admin saying it was over.  What?  What the hell? 

So I've missed it.  I guess it must have been on at 4.30pm my time, but for some reason I was locked out.  Perhaps there were too many people online at once.

So that's it, no more.  I can't see her or hear her on Australian Idol because she's gone, and now my one chance of contacting her is gone.

Check them out:

Mordor MUD (the main one)
Crimson 2 MUD (which I played ages ago and submitted just for the heck of it)
Anime MUD (which I had played relatively recently, but hadn't written a review for yet, and they actually posted fairly quickly)

Anyway you can read the other 2 just for comparison, but check out the Mordor one.  I am so so glad that it finally got in!  Woo hoo!

I decided to investigate it a bit further, with the help of Google, to determine what precisely happened, what started the idea that the Hillsong Church was rigging Australian Idol.  Were they really all members of the Hillsong Church?  Indeed, how can a church be that influential?  Its one church and this is a nationwide competition.

It seems that the problem started with a program called Today Tonight.  See here:

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,23663,22577077-10229,00.html

It seems that Today Tonight, which is an Australian "current affairs" news show (and is regarded by most as tabloid journalism, focusing on stupid stories that are mostly untrue rather than on the real issues), they had said that 4 of the members of Australian Idol's top 8 were members of Hillsong Church, a church in Sydney.  The 4 members were:

- Mark
- Daniel
- Tarisai
- Ben

They suggested that the church had put forward these 4 great singers in the same competition to ensure that they were the top 4 contestants, to stack the votes and rig the competition. 

So what happened after they released their story on October 5th?

Friday October 5th - Today Tonight runs expose on the final 8
Sunday October 7th - final 8 perform
Monday October 8th - Mark, the first of the Hillsong crew, is eliminated
Monday October 15th - Ben, the second of the Hillsong crew, is eliminated
Monday October 22nd - Daniel, the third of the Hillsong crew, is eliminated
Monday October 29th - Tarisai, the fourth of the Hillsong crew, is eliminated

Now, this is suspicious to the extreme.  But it gets worse. 

- Although they only barely touched on it, in fact Today Tonight had also mentioned Matt Corby.  He is one of the top 4.  If this is going to influence things, then Matt Corby will be the next to go.
- Some sources suggest that Marty is also involved in Hillsong, so he would be the next to go after that.

In other words, it is based around who is most likely to actually be in Hillsong, not based on talent.

And what makes things worse is that they aren't actually in Hillsong at all. 

Before the story broke, Tarisai Vuche and Matt Corby were the favourites for Australian Idol.  Indeed, it is quite clear that Tarisai Vuche is easily the best singer, and Matt Corby, who is an androgynous 16 year old boy, has the best look and will appeal to many people.  Also Matt is probably on par with Marty as the equal 2nd best singer.

So more realistically couldn't it be that the people on Today Tonight were doing their own version of rigging the competition, in trying to get Natalie and Carl to get in?  Are they all trying to help the Australian Navy to get the comparatively untalented Carl to win the competition?  Or are they trying to get the rather average white Australian girl Natalie to win?  After all, in the top 8 there were only 2 girls, and one of them (Tarisai) isn't even Australian (she is from Zimbabwe).  Many people hate that last year's winner was from Ireland, so they didn't want a repeat.  So they wanted an Australian girl to win.  Or perhaps they want the Australian Navy to win.  These two were considered by most to be the worst 2 singers in the top 8.

So in response Australian Idol has tried to avoid the suspicion of doing the wrong thing by getting rid of all of the people associated with Hillsong, or suspected to be associated with Hillsong.

Next most closely associated is Matt, then Marty.  So you've got your final 2 already.  Carl and Natalie will be in it.

The thing is of course that they aren't actually involved in Hillsong at all.  Its yet another case of Today Tonight getting it all horribly wrong.

http://www.livenews.com.au/Articles/2007/10/16/Hillsong_Backlash_Hurts_Favourites
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,23663,22573027-5000660,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,23663,22577077-10229,00.html

The thing is that it has all crept up on us, and it all looks plausible.

Mark - wasn't all that good, so perhaps his being in the church was a coincidence
Ben - was very good, and very popular, but perhaps this is a coincidence.  After all its only 2.
Daniel - was probably in the bottom 3 of the 6 that were left on merit, and since Carl and Natalie both got touchdowns perhaps its okay. 
Tarisai - was bashed by the judges, and flipped out, except that she was the favourite, has the best voice, and had masses of people support her.

And of course the decision isn't made by the judges, it is meant to be solely based on SMS votes, which should have given Tarisai the top spot this week to stay, not to leave.

If they are being influenced by the Today Tonight nonsense about Hillsong then next week Matt will be eliminated, the week after Marty.

Of course, perhaps its all one enormous coincidence.

But I don't think so.

It is very disappointing that Tarisai left either way.  Such a pity that she was the victim of a Today Tonight smear campaign.

This week on Australian Idol saw Tarisai Vuche eliminated, meaning that she is effectively ranked 5th, as 4 more remain after her.  She was absolutely trashed by the judges last night, which led to a large proportion of the Idol-watching public hating her, calling her "fake", but it also led to a lot of people who ordinarily couldn't care less about her supporting her.  She certainly didn't lose any fans because of it - she gained them.  And whilst she might have had perhaps 40% of the Idol-watching public hating her, she had another 40% loving her.  And this isn't a "voting someone off" kind of a show - its a "voting someone in" kind of a show.  So her having the largest number of fans should have meant that she was the number 1 person, and that she stayed.  But it didn't.  So this got me thinking - is Australian Idol rigged?

If it was based on the judges then she would have been out this week.  But their opinion doesn't make any difference to anything.  It is supposed to be purely based on phone votes from members of the public - by SMS or by calling an expensive phone number (both are expensive actually).  So really the fact that the 4 judges (or at least 2 of them) hated her shouldn't matter.

Indeed, if internet activity is any guide, she should have easily finished as the top pick.  Her Australian Idol page had 92 messages, whilst the other 4 combined had less than 40.  So how come she gets 92 positive messages while the next best is Marty with 15, and yet she gets voted off?  All around the internet she was getting more and more support from every corner.  So what is going on?

The thing is that after the judges decided to slam her, whilst praising the other 4, she retaliated on camera and then much worse off camera, to the extent that the judges had to issue an apology at the end of the show.  They wanted her gone.  If she was working somewhere and she behaved like that to her manager, she'd be fired on the spot.  But this isn't work, and they can't do that.

So then is it possible that the SMS votes weren't actually counted this week?  That in fact Tarisai got in quite easily but was removed by decision of the Channel 10 managers?

Indeed, how sure are we that it is ever fair?  Where are the checks and balances?  It is supposed to be a sum of all of the votes, but do they really count them?  What is there to stop them from just ignoring the votes and instead deciding for themselves who stays and who goes?  They could very easily do this.  Indeed, do they do this?

The reality is that the show gets a good proportion of their income from these expensive calls that people have to make to vote.  You can vote multiple times, and each vote costs I think $5, so they can get lots of money from these votes.  Sure, they get some income from the television rights, but a lot from these phone votes.  If people knew that it was all rigged, then they wouldn't bother to vote.  If they knew it was rigged, they'd just watch and see what the judges decide.  A large part of the success of the show is the illusion that your vote counts, that the most popular singers get through.  If that illusion was shattered, much of the show's format would be destroyed.

So I am going to put that one out there.  Tarisai Vuche being eliminated this week suggests extremely strongly that the votes don't count.  She shouldn't have been eliminated based on votes.  She got by far the most support this week, and this should have been reflected by her getting the most votes of any of them.  Not the least, the most.  There isn't a number for you to call to vote her off, only a number for you to call to vote her in.  Of course, I suppose you could just vote for someone else to vote her off, but even still the level of support for her would counter that.

Anyway, I don't usually watch Australian Idol.  Whilst I appreciate that most of the singers are better than what I could do (even at my peak), they aren't the best musicians out there.  I usually don't care.  I couldn't care less.  Its just that this time, for the first time in the 5 years that the show has been running, there was someone on the show with real talent - Tarisai Vuche.  She was beautiful and lovely and her voice was heavenly.  And she finished 5th.

So I don't see the point in watching any more of it.  What is the point?  I can't watch it hoping for some kind of justice, because quite frankly who cares who wins?  I guess Matt is favourite now, ahead of Marty, then I guess Natalie and Carl.  But it is a disgrace to have 2 bad singers in your top 4.  And for all I know the top 2 will be Natalie and Carl, which would just be a complete joke.

Yes, it exposes good singers to the world, and then the world decides by buying their records.

I wonder if Tarisai will release any songs, and what will happen from there.

Another aspect of this is the whole conspiracy theory that was announced 3 weeks ago that 3 singers were all members of the same church, and that they were stacking the votes.

The 3 members were Ben, Daniel and Tarisai.

This week Tarisai was eliminated, the week before it was Daniel, the week before that it was Ben. 

That suggests even more that Australian Idol is rigged.  If they were keen to eliminate controversy by getting rid of the 3 people who may have been manipulating the voting, then that's what they've done there.

It puts the whole question of merit in to question.  On one hand, if Daniel, Ben and Tarisai were getting extra votes due to their church stacking the votes, then if any of them won then it'd be a disgrace (especially if they were the top 3).  On the other hand, if they were dismissed purely for being in that church, then that's wrong too.

I personally don't mind Daniel leaving, or Ben, but Tarisai was far beyond any of the others.

And quite frankly I don't believe the conspiracy theory.  One church can't determine who wins Australian Idol, and it also can't make people great singers.

The ultimate test of this is if any of those 3 release an album, and how many people buy it.  Would all 3 sing together?  Its a possibility I think, if they are all from the same church.

Conspiracy theory with your Australian Idol, anyone?  Or is it a conspiracy theory to suggest that that is a conspiracy theory?  Who knows.

So I decided to watch Australian Idol again this week, for 2 reasons:
1) To see the beautiful Tarisai and to hear her heavenly voice
2) To try to make sure that Tarisai makes it through this week

Tarisai turned up with a completely different hair style.  Gone were her gorgeous curly hair and freaky hair style, and it was replaced with a very straight style, that looked much longer, and with a fringe.  I didn't like it.  It wasn't Tarisai anymore.  Then, rather than sing a song that utilises her voice, she sang a freaking Veronicas song.  Veronicas is a very average band, and that kind of a song suits someone like the very average Natalie more than it does the exquisite Tarisai.  There really wasn't much that Tarisai could do with the song.  She added a little bit to it, but it just wasn't there to show off her voice.  It was deeply disappointing.

And then after all of that, the first judge, Kyle Sandilands, decided to have a rather lengthy spiel about how someone had called her fake on radio, and what it meant, and how she clearly wasn't being fake, but how she had to just stop trying to please everyone and just be herself.  Then Mark Holden, who was the guy that sat with her to orchestrate the song, said "Sorry, I thought it was fake", to take away all of that support.  She blew up at him.  And then Dicko said the same thing, and made it worse, with comments like "It doesn't matter what we say, you're still going to do the same thing.  You don't listen".  And even Marcia Hines, the nice judge, didn't say anything.  She just said "I don't have anything to say".

She was spewing, about to punch the lot of them, or cry, or something like that.  It was rotten.  And it reminded me a little of that bit in Bruce Almighty where Bruce finds out he didn't get the anchor job and just starts spewing chips and bashing everyone.  It was like he was trying to get fired.  This was the same thing.  It was like Tarisai was trying to get booted out.

However, if Tarisai is in trouble for not reacting, and now she has reacted, then maybe there is a chance.  Except that that song was her worst that she's ever sung.  But the other 4 all did pretty woeful performances too, and hers wasn't the worst of them, so maybe there is a chance in that way too.  Except that all 4 of the others got rave reviews from the judges, except for Tarisai.  So anyway, let's rate them, in order of appearance first.

Matt completely stuffed his up, and I could tell when he missed several notes, sang out of tune, and just completely messed it up, his worst performance yet.  He admitted it later, which probably helped him out, but just the same it was really bad.  He didn't put any emotion in to it, and was just busy stuffing it up.  Of course, in Matt's favour is that he is a really good singer, so in spite of the fact that he royally messed up, he might still do okay.  He did admit to it, which is probably a plus, and then the judges all insisted that he'd done okay. 

Natalie again did the same thing that she's done so many times before - she took a really good song that really shows off someone's singing voice, and she took away all of the good parts and turned it in to a really pathetic song.  She just can't sing!  She ruined them last week, she ruined them the week before, and she ruined them again.  She took a Divinyls classic, a song that is well and truly beyond her, and she ruined it.  But Mark Holden gave her the "touchdown" so she will be safe once again.  Why isn't Tarisai doing those songs?  She could at least do them justice.

Marty did a song which he said "was special for his mother" and he nervously missed a few words here and there, forgot to change his tune where he was supposed to, and even forgot to play for a bit.  It was still reasonable, but it didn't reach the heights that he is capable of.  In other words he stuffed up.  Not his worst ever song, but not what he is capable of.  Yet unlike Matt he didn't admit to stuffing up, and instead pretended that it was "emotion".  The judges didn't seem to notice it either, and were full of praise for a royal stuff up.

Tarisai did a song that she said was "full of rage" at the people that were saying she was fake, but it was a freaking Veronicas song, who are hardly rage-filled.  Why not Baby Animals at least?  Something that is actually a bit rage filled?  The song itself was a poor choice.  Whilst Tarisai did a better job of it than the Veronicas did, she was let down by poor song choice.  Yes, she added to it (whilst stupid Natalie subtracts from songs) and technically it was probably Tarisai's best ever performance.  But she didn't have any sheer beauty in it like she normally does.  She didn't reach heights and then come down from those heights.  Instead, she had plainness and then briefly added a bit to it.  It was like she was distracted or something.  It was like she wasn't herself.

Karl did yet another plain boring song to suit his boring as all hell personality, and once again it was boring.  This wannabe Tom Jones or Michael Bolton tried to be sexy in pieces, but apparently he had a sore throat, and it just didn't work.  I guess you can't exactly say that he stuffed it up, because he just isn't a very good singer.  But he didn't add extra bits to it, and he stuffed up a little, missing a few lyrics, and not adding anything to the song.  He needs to be at 100% every week to have a chance, and he was only at 90% this week.

So on performance I think that the best was Natalie, then Marty, then Tarisai, then Karl, with Matt last.  However, I think that Matt will be pushed up because he admitted that he had done badly, and because he is overall a very good singer.  So then it'd be Natalie, Marty, Matt, Tarisai, Karl.  Now the issue then is whether the spat that she had and the reaction of the judges is going to push Tarisai down to 5th or alternatively to push her up somewhat.  It is nervous, regardless of how you look at it.

And the thing is that if like last week they'd had 2 songs to sing, then Tarisai probably would have come back with her 2nd song to really rock them all, but sadly this time because of the competing ARIA awards, they only had time for 1 song, so she is in big trouble.

I think that it should be Matt, Karl and Tarisai in the bottom 3, regardless of anything else.  If they do it on technicality of performance, Matt is out, with Karl 2nd last, Tarisai 3rd last.  If they do it based on judge's opinions, then Tarisai is dead last, then Karl, then Matt.  If they do it based on their reactions, then Matt is last, then Tarisai, then Karl.  It just all depends on a lot of things.

Anyway so I have my fingers crossed until Tuesday night (tomorrow) when we find out who made it and who didn't.

I should be careful in writing this or else Encyclopedia Dramatica might call me a paedophile!  It seems that that is what they do to everyone who dares to speak out against them!  And yet Encyclopedia Dramatica has such detailed logs of so many people that they say are paedophiles.  Surely they wouldn't make such a serious claim without it being true, would they?  All of them have what appears to be evidence too.  You only click on so many links and usually you can't be bothered investigating further.  But how many of them are wrong?  Are some of them right?  The problem is that indeed at least a few of them do seem to be right, while others really don't.  If they were all wrong then it wouldn't be a smear on the ones that are wrong.  But because some are true and others aren't then it muddies the waters and makes it that much more believable.

On the front page today was a link to an article about a person with the YouTube nickname Irish282.  I thought it was interesting, so I thought to check it out.  I read through what Encyclopedia Dramatica had written about him, and it didn't seem conclusive.  If he was a paedophile as they claim then where is the evidence?  Where is he professing a love of children?  He is saying that he wants to protect them, and in an entirely different thing he is saying that he likes sex.  I am sorry, but liking to protect children and liking sex does not combine to equal paedophile.  Most parents have had sex at least once, and yet hopefully most of them like children, at least their own.  That's how children come about!

Anyway so I was curious as to why someone would make a campaign on YouTube, which is a site that as far as I know is primarily for people taking videos at concerts, of themselves dancing, of themselves singing and so forth.  You wouldn't have thought that it was a place that facilitated harassment or anything to warrant someone standing up to this sort of thing.

Encyclopedia Dramatica of course voices their vehement support for Perverted-Justice, as well as its spinoff Corporate Sex Offenders.  They insist that while making fun of people they are very much trying to hurt bona fide paedophiles.  Yet Perverted Justice uses the tactic of catching statutory rapists, which of course are a long way removed from real rapists, and they have no intention whatsoever to catch people who are actually breaking the law or doing real harm to others.  Having fully grown adults pretend to be 14 or 15 and to make sexual advances at adults in order to "catch" them seems wrong on so many levels.  If its on the internet, surely you can argue that you knew that it was an adult and you were attracted to the person inside.  Consensual sex between two people isn't terribly wrong.  Even if you think that there is something wrong on some level for a 20 year old and a 15 year old to have consensual sex, you cannot suggest that it is as bad as actual real rape.

But anyway, regardless of all of that, you would probably think that ED is one of the good guys.  They are supporting a community that catches paedophiles, therefore all of their smear campaigns accusing people of being paedophiles is reasonable.  At least some of them really are.  Indeed, some of them are convicted criminals with confessions and so forth, of some horrible crimes. 

So I looked at Irish282's YouTube profile, with the 32 videos that he has submitted.  It seems that all but 1 of them are complaining about people being harassed on YouTube, which makes me wonder why he started there.  It makes it look like this isn't his original account, that he had another account elsewhere.  Of course his first video, Operational Leviathan, has nothing to do with any of that, and yet that is his most viewed video with over 11,000 views. 

Then a few months after that he posted about Imposter accounts, and after that every video has basically been nothing but text and warnings.

So if he was such a turd, then the community surely would react against him, right?

Well, it seems that the Imposter account issue was based on someone impersonating Kirby8943 by calling themselves Kriby8943.  But then the imposter account made a stupid video saying that they were impersonated by Kirby8943.  And so on and so forth.

Amongst all of this idiocy we have serious issues like death threats, and in response the stupid trolls have made videos making fun of it. 

Irish282 posts about harassment and death threats, and in response we get nasty attacking messages from people wearing masks, more people wearing masks and so forth.  Yet thanks to ED there are people calling him a paedophile.  Why?  Because he said that he wanted to protect kids.

So if you say that you want to protect kids that makes you someone trying to "secretly" harm them?  No, it doesn't.  Harming someone means that you are harming them. 

I don't use You Tube, but it seems that it is the same as everywhere else.  There are a bunch of really nasty people, and they are supported by people who want nothing more to laugh at the expense of others.  Not everyone on Encyclopedia Dramatica is sending death threats and such, but they do encourage it and think it is funny.  And then, seriously, they love to make up fake accusations that someone is a paedophile.

Apparently calling someone a nazi makes you a nazi, calling someone gay makes you gay, and protecting kids makes you a paedophile.

Yeah, living in upside down world maybe.

Yet once you get attacked by people like that, there is nothing that you can do really.  You can either:

1) stand up, like this guy did, and put up with the abuse
2) flee, thus making them feel justified in what they did
3) report it and just pray that you are somewhere with competent administrators

Of course, even if they get banned, it doesn't stop them.  It just makes it offsite.

Its nice to do a few things at once so here we go:

Mud connector and Mordor

It has been tremendously annoying that after 4 days still The Mud Connector hasn't published my review of Mordor mud.  They sent me a message back to say why.  Apparently because nobody else has ever reviewed it therefore the mud's admin staff get to decide whether to allow reviews or not.  If they say no, then mine will never be published.  If they say yes, then mine gets published in a week!  A whole frigging week!  The same was true of my review of Crimson, although they published my short review of Anime mud.  At least I found out though.  I am still pretty upset about that but hey.  I have for the moment given up on finding an alternative.  I will probably go back to Sloth if and when I can be bothered.

Starcraft

Why oh why do I keep on playing this game?  I'm generally not very good at it or at games of its type (I'm better at strategy games like Heroes or at roleplaying games or even the martial arts games).  Not only do I suck at it, but the people there are pretty darn rude (although that might just be because I'm not very good at it).  I was playing on Europe and winning a bit, even up to 4-1 at one stage, but it seems that that is going downhill.  About 1 game in 5 you find someone who is an absolute turd in some way.  I don't even bother complaining anymore.  You get banned from games before you even start, they switch, people try every way possible to make it an unfair game.  But it is ever so slightly fairer than hacked versions of Diablo I online, where everyone had elite equipment from the start by hacking the server.  At least here people refuse to play against hackers.  Unless they are sneaky of course.  Anyway it gives me something to do.  If my Dad hadn't bought it for me for my birthday all those years ago I doubt I would have ever played it.

My girlfriend

She hasn't been online for over a week, and I've been sending lots of messages and she isn't replying and has her phone off all of the time.  Of course, in saying that, she gets dreadful reception where she is, so its possible that I'm just unlucky that she's been out of range all of the time (she's out of range 90% of the time anyway), and I guess its possible that I am online at the wrong time all of the time too (we do tend to go online at different times to each other), and perhaps she is out of credit on her phone, indeed perhaps she had her internet cut off too.  There are a number of explanations.  But it has been too long, and I worry.  I worry that ultimately that might be it.  Does she really think that I went off with those drunk girls at the concert?  I was with my sister so I couldn't anyway.  My mum insists that she's probably gone back with her ex bf, or else has a new guy.  But that just doesn't add up.  If she was going to do that then she would yell and scream at me first.  She wouldn't just do this, just not say anything.  And we had no issues, so why would this happen?  I am going to write in here in the hope that she reads it, and responds.  All of my life's plans that I have made in the past 3 months have revolved around her, so I don't want her to go because it'd mess everything up.  And then I will be all alone for the rest of my life. 

Didn't go to a job interview

For the second time ever, I didn't go to a job interview.  The other time was for the crappiest of crappy jobs that I knew that I couldn't get, was a long way away and extremely difficult in terms of my plans for the day.  This one was for an electrical apprenticeship, which I wouldn't mind doing, although it is 3 years of work and is really for young kids.  But the problem was that it was an hour away.  I was prepared to travel for an hour each way to get there, although I wasn't so sure about doing that for 3 years, nor can I relocate because the sole reason I am here is for family, and my family is here not an hour away.  Anyway I was going to rely on buses, but then the buses stopped running suddenly, and whilst they hope to start again in a year that's not much help for me.  It is really pathetic actually but hey.  Anyway so I asked them if their store that's closer to here had one, and after about 20 phone calls and lots and lots of delays they finally got around to telling me (I had to call them, not them calling me) that they didn't have any.  It made me feel pretty shitty anyway.  But at least I'm not going against the dole rules.

Movie Marathon

In a couple of weeks it is a long weekend, and with some long weekends the movie theatres have a movie marathon.  This time they are doing them for 3 movies for $18, which is less than 1 1/2 tickets worth (and about the same as buying 3 new release movies).  The problem is that the 2 good sets both have 1 movie that I've seen, while the other set contains 3 movies that I don't want to see.  So its a choice of seeing 3 crap ones, or else seeing 2 good ones plus 1 that I've already seen.  Also I have to hope that my sister goes to see it with me, although a friend might as well.  It is an experience to do it anyway.  I've been to a few before.  But as with all things like this, its a huge amount better to go with someone else than by yourself.  I can't see my girlfriend wanting to go anyway even if she does come back from the void.  She wouldn't even go to the concert, and this is far more out of the way.  Anyway, so that's my plans for the future.

There's not much else going on, not things that I am prepared to put in a public blog at least.  Oh, and I've been reading more about Tarisai, and I am done.  A lot of people go a lot further than that though.  The whole concept seems to encourage obsessive fans.  I imagine that a lot of them get stalked and some fans get a bit creepy.  I found some faults with her anyway, like sometimes when she talks it isn't all that nice, its more kind of boring sounding and such.  Her body is nice, but it isn't perfect, and really is helped a lot by getting dressed up a bit.  Some people said that she has bad hair, but I significantly disagree with that - I think she has fantastic hair.  But at the same time it makes her kind of human.  I am interested in seeing her do a Mariah Carey number.  Because only Mariah Carey can do Mariah Carey songs, because of the vocal range required.  If she can do a Mariah Carey number then I think that she can truly show that she shines.  I mean one of the songs which Mariah Carey made basically just to show off.  "Emotions" is the big 8-octave song, but that's not necessarily the best choice.  Most of Mariah Carey's songs have a 4 octave range or more, and most singers only have a 2-3 octave range.  So if she can sing even one Mariah Carey song then she's doing well.  I think she can.  It beats non stop Whitney Houston songs.  I'm not a big fan of Whitney Houston anyway.

Thank god this thing is back up again.  All last night I was trying to post this entry and it wouldn't let me, the "Publish entry" button was not available, and all I could do was preview.  Anyway it is back up now.

So anyway I haven't watched regular TV much since I got cable TV in early 2004, although of course I haven't had access since the middle of this year (I am still aiming to get it again, I just need the cash).  Even if I was going to watch it, I wouldn't waste my time watching Australian Idol.  I mean most of the people that go on there can't sing, and if I want to hear people who can't sing I'll go down to my local karaoke contest.  Its all streamlined anyway and while its nice every now and then its not really genuine singers.  Anyway I have some kind of loyalty to the original show, that being Popstars, which fell in a heap once Australian Idol came out.  Popstars was based on the UK version, while Australian Idol was based on the American version.

But of course quite a lot of them have gone on to be quite big stars, not just in Australia even, and not just one hit wonders, or even one album wonders.  Even the people who come 2nd and 3rd and sometimes lower down than that sometimes do well.  But just the same I don't much watch it.

But last week it was on, and I said "who is that?" because there was this little black girl, and at first glance I thought she was aboriginal, as they often have aboriginal contestants (and having Marcia Hinds as one of the judges means that they get a disproportionate amount of black girls on there - but not black men!) but then I didn't think that she was.  I just saw her walk up, another ho hum probably teenage contestant, and then she started to sing, and just leaped in to magnificent voice.  It reminded me of Mariah Carey when I first heard her all those years ago, before she was properly famous.  Back when Mariah Carey was famous for having an 8 octave range, and was yet to have a hit single.  Here was a girl who topped Mariah Carey when Mariah Carey first started out.  And then I thought of Whitney Houston.  Okay so Whitney Houston didn't have the range of Mariah Carey, but she had the depth.  But this Tarisai had the best qualities of both of them.  And it wasn't just comparable, but it soon became clear that she surpassed them.  She did at least 5 octaves in a single song, with ease, and just had the depth and beauty of Whitney Houston, only more.  And I was thinking that this is just some contestant, yet there she is already better than some of the best in the music industry.

So I listened to her song, and it was almost like she was toying with us.  She got to these heights, then just collapsed, and held a bit in reserve.  It was almost like she wanted the others to think that they could compete with her, when really they couldn't.  The judges of course said that she still had 20% in reserve, and she agreed with them, because of course she did.  She could absolutely flog the rest of them. 

But the others tried their best, and all bar one other gave pretty much perfect performances, and the other one who gave something less than perfect, Marty, was the only one who could compete with Tarisai for quality.  He was like a singer out of Creed, with that romantic, soulful voice.  So because she held back and was toying with them she actually stood a chance of being eliminated.  They had her finish 5th out of 6, but that's good enough to make it to the final 5.  Thankfully Daniel, who in the early days had an image, with his scarf, tossed the scarf and became rather mundane, thus allowing him to be knocked out.  Carl and Natalie are also pretty plain, so should be the next 2 to go.  But as for the final 3, if its the 3 I think it'll be, it will be a whole different ball game.  Marty, Matt and Tarisai really stood out.

But then after her little sing, Tarisai stopped and just spoke in this quiet beautiful voice.  It was like falling in love all over again.  Not just with her singing voice, which was magical in itself, not just in the technicality of it, but with the sheer beauty of it.  But now her speaking voice was like a child.  Her lips were so gorgeous, and I had to worry because while her body looked smoking, her face looked childlike, but then apparently she's a university student so she's not just "mature for her age", she actually is that old.  So it is okay to look.  I guess 20?  Could be 25?  I have no idea.

So then of course this week I saw her again, and again she did something wonderful, but again she just cut short.  While others were getting pissed off with judges, she just stood there and copped it and said thank you.  Apparently that's why some people get upset with her - because she doesn't really listen, she just pays them lip service.  That she has a kind of arrogance that comes with her knowing that she sings a million times better than any of them.

And yet Tarisai needs to win the competition, or at least to get in to the top 3, if she is to have a recording career.  She might have a few hits if she finishes 5th, but there are going to be a lot of people who are going to think that she should have won it but she let herself down.  So I really have to hope that she does keep going and do a bit better than that.

Anyway if you want to listen to her songs, or read a bit about her, then click here for the Channel 10 Australian Idol "fan club".  There are also 2 sites dedicated to her, with her full name in the title: http://tarisaivushe.com/ and http://tarisaivushe.net/ . The first one is just a blank web page (I posted a comment but they deleted it) while the second is a fan forum, but you have to register to post, and for the moment I can't be bothered doing that.

She is from Zimbabwe, so I guess she is a refugee.  I don't know.  I would love to learn more about her, but they protect her privacy while she is in the competition, so that sort of stuff will probably have to wait until she wins it.

I do so hope she wins.

Natalie or Carl should lose next week, hopefully.  Natalie is so plain jane, and she totally wrecked 2 songs this week.  Carl is also pretty plain but he at least did a half decent version of a Tom Jones classic (not as good as Tom Jones does though).  Tarisai walked all over the original versions of all of the songs that she sang.