Told Ya It Was A White Elephant…

So it turns out that the shiny new “Look at how big my erection is” building in Dubai… is closed. Stupid pissing-contest real estate development is an excellent sign of a country that’s set to go “phut”… think “Millennium Dome”.

Here’s the story… Burj Khalifa, World’s Tallest Tower, Closed A Month After Opening.

BRO Has Become PBR

In the past I have ranted about how much I hate the sequinned prancing dagoes who participate in bull-torture and slaughter in the the 'corrida' – the short-arse wog fags who can't face a bull unless it's a small one which is already half-dead. I love it whenever any one of these cowards gets gored to death.

I've contrasted them with the real men (and bulls larger than a small Newfoundland) on the pro bull-riding circuit in the US.

I've often been accused of anti-Americanism, but that is only true as it relates to stupid Washington-centric America. I am extremely fond of the rural US, and especially the South and South-West. (Adding in the South-West lets me escape allegations of being pro-Confederate and therefore anti-negro).

Anyhow – I've mentioned "Bull Riders Only" in the past, but now the professional bullriding circuit has renamed itself… it's now called "Pro Bull Riding". It's one one of the digital channels (ONE) every now and then, and I fucking LOVE it.

It still places the bulls as being almost equal in importance as the riders; the 'rank' bulls are still spoken of in awed tones, by men who sound like Woody Harrelson (one of my favourite non-actors, since he only ever plays himself).

For example the other night one of the commentators said …

If you wuz to trah and paint a picture of a rank ornery bull, I reckon y'all'd wahnd up with sumpin that looks like that there bull right there".

Average dimensions of a pro bull rider: 6'1" and 200lbs.

Average dimensions of a faggot dago matador: 5'6" (in heels) and about 140lb.

 

Case closed.

 

So yes – your Beloved GT's preference map goes 

Woody Harrelson > Matthew McConaughey > … > every other actor in the world > Kelsey 'Fuckhead' Grammer.

 

Not that WH is the bestest.non-actor.ever – far from it… I'm also fond of the wise-guy actors (Jim Gandolfini, Michael Imperioli, Steve Schirripa, Ray Liotta).

Parsons at Jaws/Peahi… Awesome

Just Had to Think…

There seems to be no end to the range of doodads that enable vanity-publishers to spew forth their witticisms to an unsuspecting interwebs.

I've long been a fan of MaoXian, and always liked the little doodad in his right sidebar that had interesting links with his (Chairman MaoXian's) comments.

In the time that I've read his musings (a little over a year), the Chairman has had stuff about gay porn, Zippo lighters, the best shave foams, and the ridiculous meanings of the faux-chinese tattoos that the gwai loh get (that little collection was priceless).

A genuinely interesting sidebar – despite the fact that his beat (and his blog) is primarily financial markets.

Now given that your beloved GT is a soi-disant polymath with wide and varying interests, and given that I hate being derivative, I always wanted to implement such a thing on Planet Rant/Mentat… but thought that all that organising of links and comments and such would be a pain.

My first instinct is always to write an interface and db layer myself, so that ownership of my comments rests with me… the fact that my 2000-2002 wisdom now belongs to the Commonwealth Bank (and prior to that belonged to IWL) taught me that even if you don't believe in copyright (and I don't) then you should still prevent third parties from claiming copyright over your own material (by releasing everything under CopyLeft or Creative Commons or GPL).

So anyhow… I never got around to writing the interface, and now I've decided that I will make do with delicious -  I have not even bothered to investigate who owns the IP on my comments, mostly because I still intend to replace the widget with my own as soon as possible.

Famous last words…

Anyway – that little sidebar will contain some very interesting stuff; think "ZeroHedge's FrontRunning meets Radley Balko's Agitator meets Pro Libertate" with additional guff from the nanotech and medical science literature (e.g., – did you know that the 'tooth bud from stem cell' thing I wrote about a year ago is already near human trials? Or that Japanese guys have grown entire eyes from stem cells?).

 

And of course, more wild-eyed ranting. Of course.

Prayers (to Crom) Answered-ish…

I mentioned the other day that – for reasons known only to him – Crom took time out from crushing the bones of his enemies, and turned his blade (which, oddly is nameless) onto the crontab of your beloved GT.

{As a side note – why would Crom not have a name for his weapon? Thor has Mjøllnir [a hammer, but still...], some Jap guy (forget who) had Iss-Hogai… Arfa had Excalibur, and so on}

Anyway… being a naturally nervy type when it comes to site security, I immediately thought "Well, serves me right for participating in the 729 (anti-Zionist-race-hate) Project". (See – I use brackets even when I think things to myself).

So I contacted the webhost, and after some back and forth it turns out that there was indeed some small issue with crond - the Unix cron daemon. The issue arose on Jan 4th (the last day that the OzRant was autogenerated) and they are now working on it.

For all the crank that I've dished at them in the past, one thing must be said – when they are aware of a problem they usually get it fixed reasonably fast.

So let's hope that sometime in the not-too-distant future, I can replace my 'test' crontab (a one-line job) with the full Rant works&jerks, and we can rush headlong into the coming financial abyss together, laughing like hyenas who have just been told a really good hippopotamus joke.

As you will be aware, dearest Reader, the title of this post is tongue-in-cheek: everyone knows that you never pray to Crom… he's generally not in a good mood, so the best thing to do is avoid attracting his attention.

 

Speaking of attention, I now draw your attention to the fact that revealed preference – the absence of user interest in the 'ChipIn' doo-dad on the upper right of the page – indicates that nobody thinks there is value-added in moving to a streaming realtime data framework for the general site.

That's fine – it's no skin off my nose one way or t'other, since subscribers will still be able to get streaming realtime data as an option: the subscriber base already subsidises non-subscribers (albeit with highly differentiated content), and adding $2k to the freeload is not on the agenda.