Random Junk Mosaic #83

Another collection of stuff, neatly assembled into dot points.

• I accidentally wrote "Plague" instead of "Plaque" today, which I found rather amusing. It made quite a dramatic change to the sentence I was writing - "I need to get the doggie dentist to clean the plague off of my dog’s teeth."

• Henry Rollins is very cool, in an "I am going to do my bit to make the world a better place, and if that means I have to work around the clock then I will," super-awesome kind of way. He is actually using his fame to do things for causes that he is passionate about. He was interviewed on the radio last week, and amongst a bunch of stuff on important issues he said "I take my inspiration from people who are so far above my potential that all I can do is worship them." For some reason that stuck with me. It is way cooler when you hear him say it, believe me. I mostly like the fact that he is out there engaging with people about difficult issues instead of just hanging around being a rock star. And he likes blogging.

• Ads promoting TV news are annoying. In the past I would have called them newsbreaks, because they used to give people the top stories in a short space of time. Now they are like movie trailers just teasing you with a snippet of information. They are loud and dramatic, and the newsreaders use that special tone of voice so that everything sounds like "this is so important that you can't afford to miss it!!!" A lot of stories don't deserve to be spoken about like that. Didn’t their parents tell them the story of the boy who cried wolf? The people who are interested in what is going on in the world will watch the news anyway, they’re just trying to boost their ratings with people who don’t normally tune in. I used to be able to choose the networks that didn’t do that, but even the formerly sensible ABC and SBS do it these days. Sigh.

• I bought Spiderbait's best of CD/DVD thing today. I have been meaning to buy anything of theirs for about ten years. Glad I finally got around to it, because I played it and for every single song I had a little "Woo Hoo! I love this song!" moment. You can actually listen to it on their website. I've noticed that their cover of Black Betty has been in a couple of movies. It kind of sucks that such a good band might be best known for doing a cover version of a song my mum used to do dance routines to in high school. Especially after they've been around for such a long time.

All donations of random junk are welcome.