Toxic Custard - The News you had to have

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27-Dec-1999

The Prime Minister's residence security staff... a professional force dedicated to the safety of the nation's leader... and they've just gone on strike...
Santa's sleigh cleared by Civil Aviation Safety Authority to fly over Australia. "There has never been an accident in Australia involving reindeer" says the Minister for Transport.

20-Dec-1999

Otis Elevators plan to put internet-enabled screens inside lifts to provide news and no doubt adverts. Call me a cynic, but people might see more of them if they were placed outside the lifts on the ground floor.
Mormons fed cannabis cookies. "When we left the residence we felt that it was a good visit"
Boy George almost squashed by glitter ball. He who lives by the glitter ball, dies by the glitter ball...

13-Dec-1999

It had to happen sooner or later, and the whole idea just sounds so damn classy it makes you want to weep: yes, it's the drive-through nativity scene
The NSA promises it won't spy on US citizens at home. That's okay, the rest of us will try to keep them busy.
Now surely, this is Natural Selection at work. Two words: Ute surfing.
And this comes pretty close too: Old bloke, stockpiling for the dreaded apocalyptic Y2K. Messing around with gas bottles, doesn't notice or ignores the 1946 expiry date. Kaboom - house burns down. Old bloke alive, at least for now... who knows what might happen come Y2K...

6-Dec-1999

It's not just a cute cursor, it's also tracking your web usage!
Queen buys 1,411 Christmas puddings!
Mars probe - Have the Unrealistatrons struck again? They can only hope that this time it didn't burn up in the atmosphere because of a mix-up between metric and imperial...

29-Nov-1999

3 Italian nuns record a rap album!
Taiwanese company uses Hitler to sell German-made heaters. "Declare war on the cold front"!
Oh great.. Australia's domestic spy organisation ASIO now has the legal right to enter and modify computers remotely. I wonder how far it goes. Can they hack in and happily delete all my files? It was either ASIO or their buddies at ASIS that held a mock raid at the Melbourne Sheraton in the 80s, and smashed through the wrong people's hotel room doors?... "Nothing to worry about, this has been a mock raid on your PC. Ummm.. sorry, we've wiped the wrong hard drive..."

22-Nov-1999

A couple jailed in Singapore for smoking a joint in Australia three weeks earlier!
Woo hoo! Mutant mice live longer! Go mutants!
Would you pay $115 for a set of bunk beds where cultists had been found dead? It's the great Heaven's Gate Auction! Hmmm... This isn't the cult... is it? www.heavensgate.org Perhaps try www.heavensgate.com instead.

8-Nov-1999

Hands-free Internet while you drive! And the most useless, pointless bit? A voice-operated horn control. Uhhh... why not just use your hand?
Solo around the world teenage yachtsman Jesse Martin was publicising the over-use of fossil fuels?! I must have blinked and missed it. Good sailing though.
CNN Online leads with referendum story, but Tasmania is missing off their graphic...

1-Nov-1999

I rest my case: Rons Angels turn out to look awfully similar to models on Ron's various porn sites...
Also widely reported, so it must be true, right?! Rumour is Coke is designing a drinks machine that will charge you more when the weather's hot!

25-Oct-1999

A dinosaur named after an airline: The Qantassaurus Intrepidus
Apparently the CIA are starting up a venture capitalist fund!
Move over Woodstock - now you can put Jesus Christ on your credit card!
Definitely one for next year's Darwin awards: a San Francisco woman decides to protest about restrictions on "dangerous" parachute jumping. She protests by doing a jump to show how safe it is. Her chute fails to open and she plummets to her death. D'oh!
You must have heard this one - a photographer selling models' eggs to the highest bidding childless couple on RonsAngels.com. Real, or just a publicity stunt? The cynic in me remembers OurFirstTime.com... Oh GOODNESS, he's got a BOOK coming out soon, what a coincidence! And he's selling advertising on the site! Well well well. And Ron might want to check his spelling - his text mentions "Rons Angles.com", which conjures up all sorts of different images...

11-Oct-1999

The timing was apparently accidental, but would it have been any less distasteful any other week? A London newspaper ad last Friday for AXA life insurance, featuring a little boy on a station platform waiting for his parents, who haven't come home.
Indonesian and Australian troops have a spat over the disputed position of the East/West Timor border. Turns out the Australians were using a 1992 Indonesian map, and the Indonesians were using a Dutch map from 1933!

13-Sep-1999

There's a Yahoo Java news banner that prefixes every news headline with "Yahoo!" Makes for interesting reading when all the news is bad. "Yahoo! - UN withdraws from East Timor" "Yahoo! - Moscow blast kills 20, cause unclear"
Just how many retired KGB spies will reveal themselves this week? Maybe we should presume that all Cold War era MI5 officers are spies unless they reveal themselves to have actually been loyal? Might save time.
Somebody tipped off The Age that the Citylink service centre is listed as being in South Park. Oh wait, it was me. Toll road?! Oh my God, they've killed Kennett! You bastards!

6-Sep-1999

If you read it in a chain letter, you'd never believe it. But the experts really aren't sure. Does the NSA have a secret key coded into the Windows security system that allows them to hack into any Windows PC? Maybe the conspiracy theorists are right. If it's true, do we have anything to worry about? Why would the NSA bother to hack into my computer? Oh, wait a minute, I'm the guy that according to the US government writes a hacking/phreaking/anarchy journal. You're reading it now, so they probably know about you already. Hmmm... how hard is Linux to install? But then, who knows who might have written the relevant bits of Linux.
What a classic! The Clinton Defense fund sends a plea for donations to Monica Lewinsky's dad!
HOT Hotmail - security breach results in a Swedish business manager's e-mails to prostitutes being uhhh... exposed. D'oh!

30-Aug-1999

MCG, smoke-free? Ha!
How do you cause virus hoax confusion? Make the first paragraph of your article contain the threat so that anybody who doesn't read beyond it runs into the street panicking. Then put that same paragraph (or an equally dubious headline) as a teaser on your home page. Well done.
Hot investor news! No technology IPOs this week!
Stop smirking - A teenager arrested for threatening to do what we sometimes wish we could do - blow up IBM and Microsoft HQs unless they gave him $5 million. Betcha he was going to use bomb recipes downloaded from the Internet.

23-Aug-1999

MS secure music format cracked two days after it's released. Is that some kind of record?
Someone's funny but alas, unofficial, Y2K statement
Alaskan Robert Bogucki shows up after 40 days in the Great Sandy Desert. He's not sure why he went out there, but "it was kind of just a feeling to do this". I hope if I ever get a feeling to do something like that that somebody stops me and tells me what a stupid idea it is.
Hackers do something worthwhile! They've hacked www.godhatesfags.com to direct people to www.godlovesfags.com. By the same authors as the former, check out www.godhatesamerica.com - are these people obsessed or what?!

16-Aug-1999

First it was Woodstock, now there's a Linux credit card.
Harpoon aimed at a different kind of Wales - the royal kind. That's probably the kind of hassle you don't need when you're on holiday.

9-Aug-1999

Australian government decides to change the coming constitutional referendum question to explain what people will be voting for. What took them so long to figure this one out?
ABC News online - their two week old new look includes leaving the same feature story on the front page all this time...
Oh great: US gun manufacturers using fear of Y2K to convince people to buy more weapons.

2-Aug-1999

Prince William got his driver's licence. Let's hope he keeps his seatbelt on. (How would he go getting insured?)
NASA pounds their space probe into the moon... now they can't find any of it! Eugene Shoemaker already died in a car crash - was it really a great idea to get rid of his ashes in another crash? Hmmm... kind of a JFK Jr thing I suppose, just re-enacting their deaths.
Microsoft changes its mission statement... now that they've got a computer on almost every desk, it was time for a change. So now it's something about burying AOL over chat programs. Oh wait, it's not called "chat" anymore is it, it's "instant messaging".
Who knew... the guerillas fighting Cuba's Castro are called the FARC. Must be like unlimited ammunition for Cuban satirists.
Monica Lewinsky slightly injured in a traffic accident. Insert your favourite gearstick joke here.

26-Jul-1999

Ah, so the people on radio who are the most opinionated are being paid for their opinions. In fact, are the ones being paid the most also the noisiest?
Another Kennedy goes to that big compound in the sky. But why the blanket coverage by the Australian media of the death of someone we've never heard of? Oh, heard of once: in that Seinfeld episode. How is it that other rich family dynasties don't have this kind of bad luck? Wait, is flying a pedal-operated aircraft when you've got an injured ankle and minimal experience just bad luck, or err... umm... well, stupidity? (Bet I get some mail over this!)
Looking towards the future of Network Computing, or just too much time on his hands? http://www.webos.org/ (but Netscape users need not bother)
Peace love and credit, man... http://www.firstusa.com/woodstock/ (Is this what caused the riots?)

Toxic Custard: The News you had to have