6 a.m. Saturday, November 13th
So it's 6 a.m. here and I've been up since about 4:30, as my body has decided it's not quite ready to submit peacefully to Oz's schedule. Since I was wanting to go out and hang with The Ben Seck and random gamers tonight, I'm sure I'll be feeling this later. Oh well. Life is short, play hard, or whatever other programmed advertising slogan I've been brainwashed to spit out is appropriate.

Since I'm not particularly interested in reading right now and I have no internet connection in my room (how very f***ing backwards...) I just watched a music video with some guy and some girl attacking each other in this spinning room with black markers. They eventually strip off all their clothes and run around the room covered only in marker slashes. How very odd. Of course, everything quickly returns to normal, as that is followed by a Britney Spears megamix.

Speaking of music, from what I've heard here thus far, the majority of the Australian public has abysmal taste. It's like they took the poppiest parts of the 80s and 90s and just keep recycling them over and over as "classics." I'm guessing Milli Vanilli and New Kids on the Block were huge here. Tiffany clearly should have come down under to continue her musical career instead of showing her bits in Playboy, and Hillary Duff has already made this choice, which appears to be working out well for her thus far.

I wonder if Playboy takes people with fat ankles... Do they airbrush them out? Does anyone else even care about this?

Catching the videos on the tellie was actually a nice boon though, since Australian hotel TV is actually worse than U.S. hotel TV - something I thought might not be possible. For those of you who don't get to spend much time in hotels outside of the kind you pay for by the hour, allow me to explain. Hotel TV is a scam designed to get you to buy the pay-per-view movies (pornographic or otherwise). They give you just enough channels so that you won't notice that you're getting totally gypped, but not nearly enough to keep you actually entertained if you happen to be staying for a week and there's nothing on network TV. In the States, this usually means four out of the five networks, ESPN but rarely the Deuce (and definitely not the Ocho), TBS or TNT but not both, and CNN + CNN Headline news.

Here in Oz, they don't even bother with the appearance that you aren't getting boned by their lack of entertainment options. You get twelve channels, one of which is the Buddhist Channel (nooooot kidding), one is the tourist channel, plus Bloomberg, Sky News, and various levels of crap on the rest. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but right now I'd f***ing kill for some ESPNews or HBO 1-18.

Honestly, all I need are the four real networks (UPN need not apply), MTV2, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNews, and Fox Sports World. That would be my ideal travel TV lineup, but somehow I think it will never be realized.

Some awful white rapper just popped on, which reminds me that Jim Ferraiolo still hasn't written a damned thing since States, and I'm not on AIM right now to give him sh** for it. Thankfully I have this nice public reminder area to flog him into submission. If you have Jim's e-mail or AIM name, please inform him that he needs to produce some articles. He should also add the Fifteen Best Rap Albums of All Time to his next article as a bonus section, which is the obvious successor to the Fifteen Best Rap Songs of All Time that I pestered him into writing originally.

You hear that, James? I'm on the other side of the world, and I'm still hounding your slack ass. How you like me now?

Random aside: Can Little Bow Wow and Jojo date? It that even legal? She's like thirteen or something, so if any of you watch that video and lust after her or any part of her posse, you deserve to get locked up. Even friggin' Hermione is more legal than that. No, I don't want to know what you'd like to do with her with your magic wand. Back to LBW and Jojo... the song is surprisingly good. Wonder if Oz and the long flight time are affecting my brains.

As if to test me on this one, Hanson followed the teenage hip-hop duet. Didn't this band used to be a sister act? Who would have thought that both the girls and the boys in one family could be so talented? We haven't seen this sort of musical talent in one family since the Osmonds, or maybe the Wahlbergs.

All right - time to go run the Full English Breakfast and then get Dale Aitken to tell the hotel that I'm not supposed to have a roommate, and they can stop hassling me about moving rooms so they can stick me with somebody else. Unless she's hot, in which case maybe it will give me a chance to actually chat up Aussie women that aren't waiting tables.

Maybe tomorrow I'll write something that isn't a giant non-sequitur. Then again, maybe not.

Ted Knutson
Teddy Card Game
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