Phileas Mann Is Not Suitable For Consumption

has moved to Phileas' new site @

phileasmann.net.

Haven't posted in a while. Been really, really busy - I'm alternating on work (employment & schoolwork) that I've missed while I've been on bed rest, working on my new pet project (42 Wallaby Way, which is looking quite good), and throwing up a myriad of new medicine I have to take.

I hate it. Today, I've seen so many types of doctors over the past 2 weeks, and they've put me on the following:

1. A vitamin suppliment (I'm actually not really sure what it is!), in form of a drop, where I have to add like 25 drops to my daily cup of coffee. Doesn't look good when at Starbucks - something akin to spiking drinks in clubs.
2. Anti-deps. Bit reserved about this... heard they turn you into zombies. But, I guess it helps.
3. Stress-reducing herb formula. Thank God it's a capsule - if it was in any other form, I'd stop all this treatment altogether.

Anyways, enough about me feeling like a complete zombie/drug addict - rant time. Royal Easter Show - yea or nay? I can get cheap tickets. They cost like $30 normally, but I can get one for $12. But then, that's  not it. You've got the overpriced food, the rides to pay for, and, fucking hell, the bloody overpriced showbags. I mean, who pays $35 for a bag of lollies that you can get for $3?

I remember the days when the Easter Show was good. Those were the days - where the attractions were somewhat, if not, barely, interesting, there was a lot for the kids to do and the parents to see, and the showbags were good. 2 words: Coke Showbag. That was the ultimate! For $15-20, you get a really nice Coke messenger bag, a few 600 mL Coke-affiliated various drinks, some nice speakers/headphones, and some other Coke-branded crap. The total value was definitely worth the $20. It was bloody awesome.

Fast forward to 2008's Easter Show. You get a hat. Wow! A hat! Sooooooo awesome! I pay (now) $30 for a hat! And, what's this? Ohhhh! Sunglasses! Wow!!!!!!!!!!1 [/sarcasm]

The only reason I want to go is for the Pixar showbag. More specifically, the Wall-E showbag. The only other reason I will be going for if there's some special show, like where a true re-enactment of Animal Farm is played by real animals. Or something as remotely interesting as that. But, at this current state, it's a piece of shit.

But, the Wall-E showbag! It's driving me nuts!

I'm a confused man.

Well, being virtually chained to my bed, I've worked on my pet project for the past couple of days - 42wallabyway.net.

I'm a die-hard Pixar fan, and I decided to join Pixar Planet. And it provided me the inspiration to make a (noncompeting!) blog about Pixar.

Kinda finished with the web design, check it out: http://www.42wallabyway.net/site. Bought the code as the base for the theme, and made my own graphics.

... who's to blame for suddenly making a site about my love for Pixar? The AM forums. Discussion has officially dried up there, and I've decided to "move on". Will still go to Aust Media, so don't worry :P

EDIT: Yep, got new hosting. No, I won't transfer PMINSFC to Wordpress, as I'm really content with Blogger ATM.

So, I'm on bed rest on doctors' orders. And I hate it.

No school. No work. All I've been doing for the past couple of days is just feeling like crap, sleeping all day on the couch while Sky News runs in the background.

I am dead bored. I've already completed 50+ games of Solitare, made my Sims have sex 20 billion times already, killed a whole lot of pedestrians in GTA SA, and, proving that I am sooooo bored, finished reorganizing my documents in all of my laptops.

I want to go play a set of tennis. Maybe go biking. Or go spluging my money at DFO. But, fucking hell, I'm too fatigued to do those stuff. Just sitting here, and watching these sons of bitches on TV ranting on about the financial crisis. Maybe it's time to change the channel...

But, heh, I've got to endure 5 more days like this. I'm BORRRRRREED!

That's right, kids. The word of the day today is whores.

Context, you ask? I'll give you context. Today is the last straw for me for crappy customer service. I know, I know, the economic crisis is affecting us all, and I am happy to pay a bit more than "better financial times" (or if need be, much more, hint hint nudge nudge all those companies I suck up to), but the economic crisis does not give a free pass for crap customer service. I should be getting, and I expect, the same service as I was. Morals are still up. People can still afford to go out and shit. It's not like we're in a depression kiddos.

So, I don't understand why I waited 30 minutes (yeah, no exaggeration) to be served at McDonalds on Friday. Those number paper pre-order thingies - they just slow the line down! And when I do finally get in front of the line, when I do finally get served, this whore (word of the day!) screws up the whole thing ("NO! I ASKED FOR A DELICHOICES CHICKEN ROLL! WHY DID YOU GIVE ME A McCHICKEN?!"), and I have to wait. Again.

I have a line of temperament. I'm that (pompous) guy that gets pissed off at people getting pissed off at store employees. And that line is set pretty high. But these days, customer service, anywhere you go, even up in the air (shitty service 30,000 feet is not pleasant), is just soooooooooo bad.

Many businesses undervalue what customer service can do. My parents, God love them, went car-shopping a few years ago. (I've never bought a car BTW, it's called nabbing an old car from your parents.) And they went to Toyota. They had a pretty modest budget, and they wanted something decent, not too small yet not too big, so they wanted a Kluger. Even though they don't need the space. And, mind you, they're as modest as you can get (quite the opposite of me :P). Apparently, when they asked questions, asked prices, extras, and even asked for a test drive, this son-of-a-bitch salesman was really, really snobby and did everything out of hesitation and a sigh. When you're spending $40,000, a hesitating sigh is not what you want. And, naturally, my parents took their business somewhere else - and that's the way it's supposed to be.

Now they have contempt for Toyota drivers. Now I have contempt for Toyota drivers. I also have contempt for McDonalds diners, US Airways passengers (terrrrrrible!), 3 Mobile users, Costco shoppers (long story, I'll tell you later, if I ever get bored), GoDaddy domain name owners.... you get the point.

If I could find one store that is consistent, and provides good customer service, I'll be their #1 customer. While I buy for the use of the product, a majority of my decisions also come from customer service.

Consumer Power! USE IT!

(Footnote: Parents eventally got a Subaru 4x4. They're happy with it. And, you guessed it, it was a friendly salesperson that made them bought it. Waiting to nab that one off them :) )

Shit.

I've got a brand-spanking new white iPhone 3G 16GB just sitting on my desk. Without any applications. Without any contacts. Just full of Queen - Greatest Hits and the Incredibles. A freggin' $850 iPod touch.

One of my best friends sold it to me, unboxed but unused, for only $350. She didn't want it in the first place, so I was the first one to snatch it up. It was a Optus Prepaid pack, and she took the SIM that came with it. I'm a Vodafone guy, and I have no Optus account. Plus, I need to jailbreak my iPhn for tethering reasons.

And, so, when I got it, the worst was inevitable - it came as 2.2.1!!!!!!!!!

This meant that it came with a 2.30 baseband, and, everyone knows you can't PwnageTool that, so, sigh.

So, now, I am refreshing the Dev Team blog every 20 minutes, waiting, waiting...

Anyways, I have a lot of more important crap to sort out before the iPhone, i.e. finding a new psychologist. I find this guy getting more unprofessional as the sessions go by. I don't pay $200 a session for nothing. The last session he did was effectively just insult me about my weight (I'm no fat shit, but I'm no macho hulk either)... and I can't take it anymore. Quite frankly, I could pay someone else $200 to do a better job. I could even save myself $200 by doing the fucking DASS 21 by myself. Hmph.

.... you know how hard it is to find a good psychologist/therapist around in Sydney...?

Music is getting pretty terrible these days. Shizz In My Pants? Shit in my pants is more like it. I can't believe crap like that is getting airtime than other artists who actually have a proper story in their lyrics, let alone a better melody. And so you can realise that good artists are becoming harder to come by. At least there's a few artists still out there putting out songs with at least a hint of a melody, and one of them's Whitley.

I've actually heard Whitley in an ad, more specifically, the Foxtel HD+ ads (hint hint, nudge nudge at the Marketing dept.: it's working. You've got a customer partially due to those ads).

Don't let the whistling and the dialouge fool you - beneath the commotion, you've got a good, catchy song underneath that compliments the whole ad very, very well. Ad at the jump.

Here's the full song. There wasn't an official music video, so credits to Julia Mahoney for creating the "unofficial" video, which could be mistaken for the real deal.

The song has that pure folk-y feel, yet not pop-pish, yet catchy. It's one of those songs that you rarely find, like Croatia as a tourist destination. Maybe the wannabe-teens of today may troll my blog and spam: "WhAt A N00B JiZZ in my PANTS is 133t... and I can troll forums and think I'm soooooo cooool!" And until record companies stop giving all their money to fufil the void of trashy songs (and DRM research, bleh), we will be swamped with crap to our ears and good, hearty songs like these will be lost forever.

More about Whitley - he's a musician who has released his first album, The Submarine, in 2007. He's finally getting recognition these days, and one of his songs, Shot to the Stars, which is as good as Lost in Time, has finally gotten playtime on TV. It's featured on an episode of Army Wives, a television series made and being played in the United States. So that's a biggie for him.

But, besides that, he's one of those small artists, performing in various places around Australia, etc. But I see potential in him and Lost in Time is now in my coveted Top 25 Played Songs list, which comes in at 35 times played.

Next time on PDCM: "Hey, show some love, you ain't so tough, come fill my little world right up, right up..."