Toxic Custard Workshop FilesThe news you had to have
Latest | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999

18-Dec-2000
11-Dec-2000
4-Dec-2000
27-Nov-2000
20-Nov-2000
6-Nov-2000
30-Oct-2000
  • Hackers break into Microsoft, and may have stolen some source code. What would be a laugh was if they fixed some bugs in it and optimised it and put it back, a la Linux...
  • Borland's Kylix - does it, or does it not, sound like something the guys from Men Behaving Badly might come up with in honour of Kylie Minogue?
  • USAirways proves pigs can fly - from Philadelphia to Seattle, and in First Class, too!
  • C'mon, a company with a name like Email shouldn't be having to lay off staff. Surely it could raise a squillion (that's half a squillion in US$) just using the name as the basis for an IPO! Ah well, at least it's losing money like an Internet start-up should...
23-Oct-2000
16-Oct-2000
9-Oct-2000
  • Jesus, appearing nightly on the side of a South Australian café wall
  • ... meanwhile a West Australian town appears to be involved in the impromptu making of a new Mad Max movie. Police have "downplayed" the fact that the town's entire population have done a runner...
  • The first truly intelligent house... featuring the screenfridge, the home's nerve centre, with a touch-sensitive screen. But where will you be able to stick up useful junkmail coupons and your kid's latest masterpieces? And will using conventional fridge magnets bugger up the screen? And I can't wait for the day the robot lawnmower has a coredump and goes crazy.
2-Oct-2000
  • Unofficial Olympic mascot Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat wasn't banned at all, say the Olympics officials, swearing blind that they really do have a sense of humour, honest.
  • CNN gives us Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi For Dummies
  • Olympics thief sits next to the guy whose security pass he'd stolen. Then he runs off and is caught by the Australian judo team! D'oh!
  • Any Americans who tuned into the Closing Ceremony care to report whether or not NBC chopped out Jimmy Barnes and his song which included the line about being "still mad at Uncle Sam"?
  • Peter Hore has a go at disrupting the marathon! Hasn't anybody considered putting together a deputation to find his house and stage a pitch invasion on his front lawn, set up a picket in front of his toilet, or streak across his livingroom? On the other hand, from what I saw of him on the John Safran Media Tycoon programme, he looks like the kind of nutter who (a) wouldn't care, and (b) almost certainly doesn't have a house, at least not in the conventional sense of the word.
  • That's all the Olympics news for a while. Promise.
25-Sep-2000
18-Sep-2000
11-Sep-2000
  • Okay, this is a bit horrible. Before you pick up that bit of Olympic merchandise, note this: every bit of official merchandise has a small portion of a spit sample provided by an unnamed athlete, so it can be DNA tested to see if it's genuine.
  • The Sydney Hemp Olympix - joint rolling, bong throwing...
  • Is George W Bush actually related to Dan Quayle?
  • Oh the endless fun of playing with search engines. It keeps simple minds like mine amused. Try searching altavista.com for "prostitutes" and see what it suggests. I like the stuff at the bottom, where it says:
    • Shop the web for prostitutes
    • Ask an expert on prostitutes at EXP.com
    • Shop best deals on prostitutes or almost anything at DealTime!
    • Learn more about prostitutes at Britannica.com
    • Find Yellow Page listings for prostitutes at WorldPages.com
    • Shop by request for prostitutes at Respond.com
    • Refine your search on prostitutes with LookSmart Categories
4-Sep-2000
28-Aug-2000
21-Aug-2000
  • He's back... and appearing on some woman's computer: Kurt Cobain returns! She didn't find anything with a virus scan... so she had the computer exorcised. Which a lot of computers could do with, I reckon - Kurt or no Kurt.
  • A mass mass outside Rome... it's Godstock! Commemorative credit card coming soon, no doubt...
  • Would you name your first born after a web site for $5,000? If you invested it carefully it might pay for the psychoanalysis when the poor kid realises where his name came from... 
14-Aug-2000
7-Aug-2000
31-Jul-2000
24-Jul-2000
17-Jul-2000
  • Mother listens to son's fatal crash on mobile... then has heart attack and dies too. Shouldn't have used the phone while driving then, should he...
  • Craig Shergold is alive and well, and drowning under cards! (Quite frankly, I'm amazed that nobody owns craigshergold.com)
  • But William Reynolds isn't alive and well, so his local council benefits office wrote to say, in a beautifully worded note, "Your Council Tax Benefit has been stopped because there has been a change in your circumstances, the change is because you are dead."
  • A man given a deliberate heart attack "feeling great!" Next week they're going to try lopping a leg off and seeing how he feels.
10-Jul-2000
3-Jul-2000
  • Buckingham Palace is, for the first time, guarded by chicks... and Australian chicks at that... At least the band playing the Skippy theme isn't as kitsch as playing the Neighbours theme. Or is it?
  • No, wait, maybe you shouldn't launch that DOS attack on spaceshuttle.comms.nasa.gov... I suppose they'll be blaming Challenger on hackers next...
  • St Kilda winning is pretty rare... The archived electronic edition may not have it, but the dead tree edition of Saturday's Age had Geelong losing to St Kilda as the Odd Spot.
26-Jun-2000
  • British Telecom claims they own hyperlinks! Uh oh...
  • I've wondered if someone could build something like this: the intelligent porn filter. It could look for the amount of fleshy colours or something. Well now someone's built one... doesn't work too well though...
  • Nike pointed to s11.org for a couple of days. s11.org says "we didn't do it, but thanks for the hits". And excuse me Mr AP reporter, that's not "British English" putting an S in organisation, that's "the spelling most of us English speakers use outside the USA" - though CNN managed to change it back which made it look pretty silly.
19-Jun-2000
12-Jun-2000
5-Jun-2000
29-May-2000
  • Well, I think that since us Australian taxpayers have collectively paid $269,000 for our government to use Joe Cocker's "Unchain My Heart" for an advertising campaign, we've got every right, should we wish to, to get onto Napster and download it... what do you reckon?
  • That's what we need for the preamble to the Constitution! An equivalent to Canada's Molson ad! And thanks to the wonders of the web, you can see the ad for yourself.
  • Sure, the potato-powered web server SOUNDS great (if a little impractical)...but it turns out you can't even believe the Beeb on this one, it's just somebody's little joke.
  • The SAS do a little counter-terrorism exercise... and end up causing about $100,000 damage to the Olympic softball stadium! So who's going to protect us from the SAS?
  • A funny thing happened on the way to the Fiji coup. The minibus carrying the armed rebels was pulled over by the police and booked for speeding and being overloaded! And then the cops sent them on their way!
22-May-2000
  • A brother and sister want to keep their dead mother frozen in glass-top freezer. Heck, why not in the middle of the livingroom! Would make quite a conversation starter...
  • No sooner has Cherie Blair given birth to baby Leo than those quick off the mark have registered leoblair.com, babyleo.com, leoblair.co.uk and babyleo.co.uk, and no doubt other permutations... Hmm. Should I grab the domains of my kids' names, to go with their dad's? Damn, one's already taken... and it's the usual bloody thing with domain names; it's not actually being used for anything.
  • Is the Coca Cola logo blasphemous to Muslims? Apparently not...
15-May-2000
  • Very tasteful placement of an advert for Optusnet's multiplayer bloodthirsty games spotted on The Age web site last week, on a story about a US school shooting. But you should have seen the version running earlier in the day (though not on that story)... Flash animation, with gunshot sound effects.
8-May-2000
1-May-2000
  • Phil Katz, the PK of "PKZIP" dies aged 37 - as NTK rather cruelly put it, "trying to compress world's alcohol into smallest possible space."
  • Hey, do we have to start hating Oracle now? Larry Ellison has overtaken Bill Gates as the world's richest person.
  • Oh yeah... that's sensitivity! Authorities put Columbine massacre surveillance footage on sale for $25!
  • Vasectomy offered as prize in a school fundraiser
24-Apr-2000
  • So that's how the US government move kids in custody disputes? Blimey, you can almost understand why the gun lobby over there are so paranoid about their government.
  • Don't give your dog too much Easter chocolate - it could be deadly!
17-Apr-2000
  • Comrades, capitalist American imperialism lives on in Microsoft Word - on my machine you tell it to switch the default language to English (Australian) and it says "okay, this applies to all new documents", then you create a new document and it's switched it back to English (US)... And my mate Conrad noticed if you then enter the name of that true-blue Aussie singing (well, okay, screaming) legend Barnesy, Word 97 will try and change it to Barney. No wonder they call Microsoft the Evil Empire.
  • I'm sure you've all seen this: "Homer" the elephant seal on the rampage. But did you see the question from some dweeb on rec.travel.australia+nz asking "is he in a zoo?"
  • Pandas on Viagra!
10-Apr-2000
27-Mar-2000
20-Mar-2000
  • 17th century English condoms were 18mm narrower than today's. Is this evolution
    at work? Is the male of the species with the biggest schlong more likely to spread their genes around?
  • Dozens of Oscars found in a bin. Wasn't on Sesame Street was it?
13-Mar-2000
28-Feb-2000

  • NASA denies that astronauts went on a space sex mission! I mean if it were true, surely we'd have all seen the videos by now? 

  • Man tries to sell his soul on eBay! eBay shuts down the auction because the vendor can't prove that the goods exist!

  • So the DoJ thinking of splitting Microsoft into 3 separate companies? So instead of one company with a monopoly in the operating systems, online and application sectors, there'll be three companies, one with a monopoly in operating systems, one with a monopoly in online, and one with a monopoly in applications? Am I missing the point? Oh, and if you don't think Microsoft has a monopoly in the online area, let me know: send me mail at DanielFBowen@hotmail.com
21-Feb-2000
14-Feb-2000
7-Feb-2000

  • The bastards! We put up with the GST, we survived through Kennett, we've even put up with them selling off all our utilities, but SACKING BENITA FROM PLAY SCHOOL?! Now is the time for the masses to
    rise up in protest!

  • Doctor carves initials in patient's abdomen?!? Eugh.

  • Ferret versus policeman: Ferret bites policeman on the penis. Policeman hits ferret with his baton. Both are recovering. To be precise, ABC news says the policeman is "back on the job" - so he MUST have recovered!
31-Jan-2000

  • Nice one guys... the Australian Olympic Committee choose a convicted serving drug trafficker as an Olympic Torch bearer. "We had no idea" says the AOC. Says it all, really, doesn't it.

  • Peter Lore, "serial pest" chalks up another one, as he heads a one-man invasion of Centre Court during the Australian Open Final. Onya Pete, you're a legend! Oh, wait a minute - not a legend, no, I meant you're a DICKHEAD! It's a bit like non-virtual hacking, really, isn't it. He doesn't really do any harm, he's just annoying. But no matter if it's just some crazed hippy, the authorities just can't seem to stop him doing it. I see the Grand Prix corporation have just about dared him to interrupt the Formula 1 cars. *SQUISH*. And I bet he wouldn't dare try it at the Phillip Island motorcycle Grand Prix - he might get beaten to a pulp by bikies... 

  • Surely you must have heard about this one - A topless woman accidentally appears during Teletubbies. Teletubbies... Teletubbies...say... "phwooooaaaaahhhh!" Or would it be "Dipsy and La La were thirsty"...? Was someone trying to get Tinky Winky to switch teams?
24-Jan-2000

  • Ambulance carrying patient delayed at toll booth until somebody found the change to pay the toll

  • Just what the world needs: Ananova, the computer-generated newsreader - a combination of Kylie Minogue, Posh Spice and UK TV presenter Carol Vorderman. Why couldn't they just get Max Headroom out of retirement? Because he's a bloke in a suit, that's why.

  • Had to happen eventually, I'm just surprised it was on that side of the Atlantic: Internet confessions
17-Jan-2000

  • Suspected mugger runs into building, goes up in the elevator. The cops follow him in another one up to the 19th floor, but he jumps out of the window, and lands on an air-conditioning unit on the building next door! Then he steals a pizza delivery man's uniform and escapes! Can't wait for the movie version.

  • Wacky labels: "Never iron clothes while they are being worn"

  • Who owns Microsoft.com and Yahoo.com? Chris Gronski. Well, he did, for about an hour last week. Truly, really.
10-Jan-2000

  • Wait for this one, you're going to like this: a woman watching a wrestling match live on TV calls the police when she thinks the fight is getting out of hand. The police politely explain that it's choreographed...
3-Jan-2000

  • Wonderful, isn't it... in the season of peace, joy, goodwill to all men, US gun sales jump in the lead up to the New Year

  • A whole bunch of web sites, mostly those counting down to Y2K, reporting weird results after the event, including claiming it's the year 19100...

Go back to those heady, wild, halcyon days of 1999

For more of this kind of news coverage, check Need To Know

Toxic Custard Workshop Files Toxic Custard: The News you had to have

Copyright©2000 Daniel Bowen