It should almost go without saying that issues of class and status are of very little concern to me. However, some casual observations of my neighbours highlight the enormous deficit between them and people with whom I like to associate.

Regular dippers into The Swamp will know of the screaming horsewhipper on one side and silent but deadlies on the other.

The Swamp

The screaming horsewhipper has no class whatsoever. She screams like a 747 every waking moment of her day. I'm hoping the Crocodile Hunter will lasso her mouth very very soon.

The silent but deadlies also have no class. They broke up recently, and Mr silent but deadly turned up on the doorstep today with his mother and they both waited outside for Mz silent but deadly to emerge. Where's their dignity for crying out loud?

However, we also have a wildebeest in the unit adjoining this one who once had class, but has become resentful because she's now as ugly as 50 pigs and knows it. She still retains a modicum of deportment, but her manners are atrocious. She's the sort you'd harpoon at a beach.

Then there's me!

I sneer at pretensions. I wear old, ripped and faded clothes, I rarely shave and I swear a lot. (You may have noticed.) I loathe pretty things, hate ornaments and kitsch, I'm not fond of pets and generally avoid children.

I'm not into social airs and graces, however ignorance is abysmal. If one is going to be an arsehole, one should at least do it well, and do it consistently.

So, the rules of social behaviour according to the Rat are as follows:

Don't upset people accidently. Don't burp or fart in public unless you intend to display a degree of contempt. Then hold the eyes of the victim and burp or fart with gusto. Just as some pictures are worth a thousand words, a sturdy fart can be more eloquent than any verbal offering. The victim knows the intent and significance of the gesture and that in your eyes, they are beneath words - that a normal display of contempt simply won't suffice.

Avoid the word "nice" like the plague. Assail your audience with grandiose words, like sumptuous, exquisite, scintillating, resplendent or superlative. (Avoid the word "agreeable" as this is pompous and nobody likes pomposity.)

Nothing is sacred except bad taste. You can become the focus of everyone's attention by an eloquent expression of poor taste.
For example:
"Which of you ladies is wearing Essence de Poisson?"
"I think this grated fresh parmessan is actually chopped toenails."
"Dandruff is acceptable in those parts of the world where eating dead babies means survival for another fortnight."

Well, one for the books...

I've moved my Swamp from Topica.com to Dwev.net because half the subscribers were complaining that they weren't getting my posts. Now half the subscribers are complaining that they didn't get the most recent post. (Including me, but that's usual because I haven't been getting my own stuff for months.)

I have to start being nice to a certain person because he twisted his boss's arm so I could have some (more) free web space to do something self destructive. When I put some content there, it'll be at http://chatrat.hisplace.net. Sounds almost Spanish, but it's not. It's Aussie. I'm going to be a lab-rat to see what sort of response I can generate. If it turns out to be successful, they'll offer it to other people.

I have to confess to being in awe of The Onion and Fark.com, so I think I'll do something along those lines, with the added bonus of some personal ads. You know the variety...

Man with big hands wishes to meet wealthy blind woman with big boobs... Phone Richard Kiel on +1 212 555 TITS

It occured to me that the biggest users of the internet are women who like to chat and young males who like to play Counterstrike. Well, I don't mind chatting, but Counterstrike bores me shitless. "Fire in the hold!" I wish it was a fire in your A drive, just quietly. So, a-hunting for obscure news I will go. A-hunting for world news I will go. Everything that is in the public domain will be filched and lampooned - as is my wont - and paraded for all the world to see.

I'd invite anyone passing to send me stuff that's weird, but I already have several stalkers who routinely fill my inbox with all sorts of stuff as it is. (One of them is lovely, so don't get me wrong there. The other is a rampant bible humping Christian freak who is determined to make me change my ways. He has two chances...) Well, now that I'm in my content entering mode, it's time to see what can be done at the Rat's new spot on the e-bog. The www.timewastersanonymous.com of e-space.... oooh I wonder if that url is gone yet...

Time to go do some damage.

Well, one for the books...

I've moved my Swamp from Topica.com to Dwev.net because half the subscribers were complaining that they weren't getting my posts. Now half the subscribers are complaining that they didn't get the most recent post. (Including me, but that's usual because I haven't been getting my own stuff for months.)

I have to start being nice to a certain person because he twisted his boss's arm so I could have some (more) free web space to do something self destructive. When I put some content there, it'll be at http://chatrat.hisplace.net. Sounds almost Spanish, but it's not. It's Aussie. I'm going to be a lab-rat to see what sort of response I can generate. If it turns out to be successful, they'll offer it to other people.

I have to confess to being in awe of The Onion and Fark.com, so I think I'll do something along those lines, with the added bonus of some personal ads. You know the variety...

Man with big hands wishes to meet wealthy blind woman with big boobs...
Phone Richard Kiel on +1 212 555 TITS

It occured to me that the biggest users of the internet are women who like to chat and young males who like to play Counterstrike.

Well, I don't mind chatting, but Counterstrike bores me shitless. "Fire in the hold!" I wish it was a fire in your A drive, just quietly.

So, a-hunting for obscure news I will go. A-hunting for world news I will go. Everything that is in the public domain will be filched and lampooned - as is my wont - and paraded for all the world to see. I'd invite anyone passing to send me stuff that's weird, but I already have several stalkers who routinely fill my inbox with all sorts of stuff as it is. (One of them is lovely, so don't get me wrong there. The other is a rampant bible humping Christian freak who is determined to make me change my ways. He has two chances...)

Well, now that I'm in my content entering mode, it's time to see what can be done at the Rat's new spot on the e-bog. The www.timewastersanonymous.com of e-space.... oooh I wonder if that url is gone yet...

Time to go do some damage.

The big soccer final is this weekend. A coupla dozen limp wristed shirt-swappers are going to chase a leather balloon around a paddock in Yokohama to ascertain who can get it to the back of the net the most when it counts. Wake me when it's over.

Threatening to eclipse the big event is a turn-up in Pomgolia (Limeria, Wasp Island, England) where the classic tale of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is having to undergo nomeclative surgery in order that hunchbacks not be offended.

Political correctness takes place in the places fewer people really give a shit.

The Bell Ringer of Notre Dame is still going to be as ugly as fifty pigs and lust after the underaged Esmerelda. Poor misunderstood Quasimodo. Poor deformed, illiterate, deaf Froggy toe-rag.

If only he'd used his testicles for niceness instead of evil.

All the world is utterly fucked save thee and me, and I'm really not sure of me.

I'm blatting (blogging to you) for the first time in a month for one good reason. I've been reading Rageboy's EGR newsletters one after the other because Topica.com no longer sends me any email.

BASTARDS!

I'm missing out on all the good shit. I go there to post my newsletter and while I'm there - if I'm not busy stirring up hornets nests elsewhere - I read the efforts of Rageboy and Terry Mertens and occasionally re-read some of my own stuff. (That's why the first line of this particular bit of blattery.)

I'm suddenly aware that there is a conversation going on around me and that some pretty wired people are involved. The try hards who lurk where I stir up those hornets are just too damn ignorant of everything except their own opinions. That wouldn't worry me, but reading that crap, it becomes clear that not only are they largely incapable of stringing two sentences together, they are manifestly incapable of coherent thought.

Ho Ho Ho you say... and then I go off and read a few EGR's back to back and make blatts about incoherent thought?

Well, yeah. As it happens I do.

The difference is EGR is real in the sense that what I'm reading is what he's thinking insofar as I think he's honest enough to share his - fuck, I don't know what you'd call them - musings with us, I guess. And besides, I'm interested in Chris because he's interesting.

Now if that isn't the understatement of the year, I'll kiss his arse. Chris Locke interesting... yep. The sun is that warmish thing in the sky that keeps us from freezing to death, unless you're stranded at the South Pole in which case you'd be entitled to ask for your money back.

My idiot older brother got home from work just before. Just before midnight actually. Wandered in, went straight to his room and shut the door. Well hi, how was your day? Really? Well fuck you.

Then the ol' lady comes home. We have one of those automatic garage door jiggy boos - you know, push the button - open sesame and all that.

Well, mid open there was an emphatic sort of popping sound. I had high hopes that the thing had blown a fuse and I might get even just a couple of minutes more of peace and quiet, until I realised she'd only been inching the car forward as the door opened and she'd run over a gum nut.

So I prepared myself - I girded my loins - for the nightly diatribe of the occupational travails. Women shouldn't be allowed to work together. Seriously. They can't get along, they harbour deep resentment of one another then bring it all home to share with anyone stupid enough to even pretend to listen.

This, people, is the real reason football is televised.

But I'm spared this horror for the evening. She's picked up one of my most treasured resources - The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations. Which means I'm in for another sort of horror.

I'm trying to compile a few thoughts about the idiot brother, and she starts quoting from the damn book.
I wanna know what's currently going on with the Colorado bushfires - the Australian news has moved on to other far more mundane things, like Australian politics (Anarchists should all move to Australia where the government is rapidly fading to the status of irrelevence - even dipping occasionally into the realm of absurdity.) - I wanna know why Rageboy AND Chris Locke have stopped replying to email.

Here's the gist of it:

I want Rageboy to do a tour of Australia. I've hooked up with a smart cookie who knows all the right people and what strings to pull, but he needs something to sell to the people who pay for these things.

So, I email Chris, tell him, yeah the fee isn't the problem, it's just that over here, you're not all that well known. Less well known than you ought to be. So I need something to keep the potential sponsors interested. Comprende?

And that's not all... when I rang him up, he said he'd love to come to Australia - who wouldn't - if some rich motherfucker would pay for him to come over.

Not a problem I think. I'm on the job. Now he goes bush and won't answer his emails. So, EGR I think to find out what's been going on, since Topica seem determined to keep me in the dark, and lo and behold, he's been blogging his brains out for the last 5 weeks.

You're all to blame for this. If you weren't here, neither would he be, and I'd have got an answer to my emails.

So, there's a solution here. All of you know Rageboy. So all of you have to let him know that ChatRat has been waiting patiently for an answer to his emails about him coming to Australia.

In the meantime, as I look at the clock on my puter, I notice it's almost 2 in the morning and I really should do something about my eyeballs which appear to be sinking further into my cheekbones the more I sit at this painfully slow machine.

Would it help if I said "PLEASE"?

PLEASE!

Ok, rant over. You better check your eggs now, they're probably ashes.

Dr. Seuss explains why computers crash:

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted at a very last resort,
and the access of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash
and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash;
and your data is corrupted cause the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
but your packets want to tunnel to another protocol,
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,

And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse;
then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
'cuz sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy in the disk
and the macrocode instructions cause unnecessary risk,
then you'll have to flash the memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn the sucker off and be sure to tell your Mom!

I'm having an email competition with a delightfully witty female personage in Queensland who is trying to beat me into submission (a phrase loaded with irony if ever there was one) by sending me every punny joke in her archive.

Not to be outdone - as if I ever were...lol - I email replies to those emails with a worthy enough content, but I don't think she realises what a bastard I really am.

So, if you have any pun jokes, good, bad or otherwise, please send them ALL to me at:
Chatrat@graffiti.net for instant forwardage.

Hell, even the best ones may make it here as well.

It's such a pity that hotmail doesn't provide its users with more than a lousy few megs of space to store emails.

Who the hell is Archimedes Pancake?

Archimedes Pancake is my imaginary friend. He's about 6 or 7 at the moment and he's looking for things to do. Anyone with kids knows that they get up to some monumentally stupid stunts, I know I did, and Archimedes is no different. Except that he's run out of things to do, and I don't want him doing the things I did as a kid because those interested in the adventures of young Archimedes will know it's just me. THEREFORE, I'm hoping to get a few emails from denizens of the world wide timetrap telling me some of the amazing things they got up to when they were kids. (Or wished they had.) I'm not concerned about accuracy here, or whether they're your ideas or someone else's.

Now, there are two ways to do this: send an email to Chatrat@graffiti.net to which I will respond....
or anonymously by using form mail at:
Chatrat
just don't fill your details in the form. All I get then is an email from mayor@powow.com and that's it.

If anyone chooses the second option, I'll set up a page with the contributions so we can all have a laugh.

NB: Anything to do with sticky tape or a foul tempered cat named Abdullah will win you undying friendship and free publicity!

This world is an ever evolving and de-volving place. DwevskyX, a net-geek who rates with the best of them has a nearly fab website at http://dwev.net. It's got lovely graphics and useful things as well, it's sprinkled with humourous bits and pieces and is really quite a professional looking site. Until the end of November last year, that is. Now the site appears to be sliding into that eternal e-graveyard of unused and unloved sites that make cyberspace look like a journey back through time rather than the biggest garage sale imaginable. What's more, his mobile phone number has been disconnected and catching on the net in any chatrooms is like bumping into Elvis at a party.
Now, my idol on the world wide timetrap, Chris Locke - Rageboy, is proving to be more enigmatic than ever. Sometimes, when I'm being frivolous, I send him an email to which I often get a reply. But when I offer money - real gelt, not that Monopoly stuff - in exchange for a copy of his new book - both of them actually - he vacates cyberspace like the starship Enterprise out of the Neutral Zone. What gives?
I know what's happened!! He's eloped with DwevskyX!!! What a horrible thought! JJ, RB, I still love ya! But I'm going to get that book request to ya and a response outta ya if it's the last thing I do.
At present, I'm sitting in a cyber cafe in Prahran (Melbourne) on this Saturday, January 12 during a gay and lesbian street party which is as busy as a one armed taxi driver with crabs. (And there may just be one or two of those in the crowd.) Why? Because my arsewiping brother forbids me to use his room to get on the internet while he's home. It's my puter, my modem and my ISP, but the damn puter is in his room. Don't ask for more specific details, it involves death.
The Swamp is doing better now than it was 2 months ago. What that means is I'm posting with greater regularity but the subscriber base is still a pathetic 15 individuals. At least there are one or two I don't know personally. Interestingly enough though, someone has posted two editions of it at Mediapeak.com. Now, if you're really brave, you can go to google.com, search for Chatrat and it will give you direct access to those two newsletters. And what's more (I'm not ashamed to blow my own trumpet here) my name, Paul Ritchie, is actually in the first page of search results. I just wish I could get money for all this crap I do on the internet.
Never mind. Archimedes Pancake is still alive and well - although no submissions have yet been forthcoming from the wider community - anonymous or otherwise. So if you're feeling brave, email me at Chatrat@graffiti.net or if not, go to my humble website at www.powow.com/chatrat and use the form mail at the bottom of the page, and I just get it as Mayor@powow.com not you.
So go for it so lot's more people can get a good laugh at your misfortunes.
Also, while you're feeling charitable towards this lil Rat, subscribe to my newsletter: http://www.topica.com/lists/swamp/subscribe
It can't hurt and you may even get a laugh out of it - if you've read this far.
Lots of love and big girlie kisses on all your behinds,
Paul. (Aka ChatRat.)

Well, now that all the festivities are over, we can get back to some good old fashioned cynicism without also being a party pooper.

Who the hell is Archimedes Pancake? Ask yourself this question when next you cast your eye across a roll of sticky tape. Wouldst thou care to know more? You know you want to.

In that case, visit my website at http://www.powow.com/chatrat and e-mail me by way of the jiggy boo at the bottom of the first page. If you can't be bothered doing that, try this one out:

http://www.topica.com/lists/swamp/read and check out the last newsletter I put out earlier this week - the one with Harry Potter in the title. Why? Because this is going to give you and all your e-friends a good laugh that's why. But like all good things, it needs to be crafted and teamwork is a laudable thing, so get yer ass on the team, it'll only take you one - just one - little effort and in a few short weeks, you'll get an email which, with a bit of luck, will achieve e-legend status. I know this, I've seen others like it that were made up on the spur of the moment by a single person. Imagine a world full of surfers making contributions. That URL again: http://www.powow.com/chatrat and the newsletter: http://www.topica.com/lists/swamp/read Do yourselves a favour!