>Hi All,

This is my first blog for a while. I have been in a mild funk and wasn’t really up for too much blogging but things are moving along so here we are back on track.

Firstly, I was trying to do some work on a laptop for a friend whose Windows XP had crapped itself. I tried everything and it simply would not reinstall. Everytime it got into the process, it would overheat and shut down. Bugger! Perversely though, it installed Linux perfectly and without a hassle – found all the hardware, hooked up to the wireless network here at chateau mac during the installation (XP has never done that!!!) and basically worked really well. The upshot of this was that I told my friend I couldn’t get Windoze to install, would he like to learn a whole new operating system. He had a particular Windoze application that couldn’t run properly in a Linux emulator so he said no – I could keep it. He has decided to buy a new laptop and I’ll help him to set that up and get his special program running. Score!!!

Only problem is that now I am even more of a geek than before and also an advocate of open source software. Poor ms. mac – she has to put up with me sitting here learning how to use the command line and zzzzzzzzzzzz…………..
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Tonight we went to the Gewerbe Ausstellung which was an exhibition of farm machinery (since we live in a semi-rural area) at the local school. An interesting affair. The lovely ms. mac has a post coming up about the tractors etc, so I won’t steal her thunder but will show you some amazing trees (Bäume) that were for sale (Zu Verkaufen)

Check out the beautiful flower on the right. Then there was this one:

This one is even better developed than the previous.

The look on the lovely ms. mac’s face is due to the prices. The first one came in at a fairly reasonable

Your eyes are not deceiving you, that is CHF 18’750.–

The second was the kicker, it comes at an astonishing

CHF 38’500.– That is a lot of cash for a tree in any currency. I’m not saying that they are expensive cos it’s in Switzerland, I’m saying it’s dear cos it’s a tree.
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Finally, we found James bike, which had been stolen from the Velo Keller a couple of weeks ago. It was nicked by the little shit down the road, who resprayed it and then he was riding it around the village!! At least in Hoppers when they nicked your bike, they had the decency and good sense to sell on the other side of Melbourne. Went down to see the kids parents and they are going to foot the bill for a new one. Result!

>When does too much fun become dangerous to your health? Whilst enjoying the hell out of more than one bottle of flavoured Absolut vodka, we chanced across something that we cannot identify. Maybe you guys can help us to identify this affliction.

Is it leprosy?

Is it the plague?

Or is it just a Ropey Old Bird having WAAAY too much fun?

I know what I think. The Knapps and the Macs have had THE best week ever in the history of awesome weeks. We know you wish you were here, but we’ve decided that the circle is complete and we’re really not interviewing anymore – sorry.

>This just in from the Urban Guerilla Photgrapher / Blogger:

Whilst waiting for young master James to get off his plane on Wednesday, this abomination was spied trundling his baggage through the arrivals area.

The question on everyone’s lips is of course: What shop even sells pink denim in mens (or even adult) sizes?

I swear that the “dress-sense” of some people boggles the mind!!

*wonders if there are any specific rules relating to the amount of pink denim you are allowed to bring into Switzerland with you?*

Who’s looking after the no-fly list at his departure point?

>Quick update for you both. Nothing exciting happening at Büro mac. Working feverishly to finish everything I can before my holiday next week.

The big news that is, of course, rocking the blogosphere (used ironically) is that the Knapps, Andi and G, are heading to our place for a week.

They arrive Sunday so there is still time to find the liver donor and have the transplant team on standby. Updates may follow sporadically.

Jamesey is home from his whirlwind Scottish tour. He bought us all back presents! I got this absolutely ace Highland Cow Snow Globe which has pride of place on my desk.

Totally awesome dude!

Watched Trekkies on Tuesday with the boys. You know you’re a loser when an 8 year old is appalled by your nerdiness. I may be a geek but thank fuck, I’m not a nerd!!! Some of those dudes are in serious need of sexin’. Obviously it won’t be me helping them out since they were mostly guys, but it raises a question about nerds in general and Gay™ nerds in particular.

It’s clear that there are Gay™ geeks, but are there Gay™ nerds??? If so, what kind of Gay™ do they attract?

That’s your lot for now.

—End transmission—

>I just got off the phone with my lovely health insurance provider and I am so angry that I want to scream!

Here in the land of cheese and chocolate, health insurance is B-I-G business. There is no kind of subsidised system and so everyone who lives here must have a basic coverage which you buy from an insurance company. These Krankenkasse as they are known in german, are making a fucking fortune out of each and every one of us.

Why is this so? The answer is that a government mandated insurance coverage means that you have no choice but to purchase health cover from one of these firms. There is no chancing your arm and saying to yourself that you feel healthy, maybe no need for insurance at the moment. The law states that you must have this basic coverage and so all the companies provide exactly the same thing.

Since the coverage is the same from all the companies, the deciding factors are obviously price and customer service. We have been with our Krankenkasse since we got here and i’m starting to think that we have gotten a bad deal. Arriving in Switzerland, we were informed that we must obtain this insurance within three months and given about two bibles worth of complex, german-language officialese to read and understand. I had no idea what we were doing so we just got on with it and got ourselves some insurance.

Here is the fun part though. For the princely sum of CHF 596 per month (USD 475, EUR 383, AUD 621, CAD 576, GBP265) we get coverage for the family. For the kids we get coverage for glasses and the like but no dental. For ms. mac and I, we get nothing but basic. To add insult to injury, they add a deductible. I have to pay the first CHF 1500 per year of all bills myself, whilst ms. mac is paying the first CHF 500. That’s right, the insurance doesn’t even kick in till we’ve shelled out a huge wad of our own cash on top of the exorbitant premium!

So we come to the crux of today’s discussion, I had missed a payment and failed to pay the reminder on time. So they gave me an additional bill and blah blah. I got it sorted and made the payments (including additional costs) but there was an extra bill included for something that I had already paid, so I rang them up and said that I had already paid the bill and could you explain the reason for this extra bill. Frau Landolt, for that was her name, spoke to me in german like I was the stupidest fuckwit to ever call her telephone.

She misunderstood my question, and started going on about the additional costs (Spesen) that I had already told her were paid. Here’s a transcript (in english):

mr. mac: “Hi can you help me, I have received these two bills and I just want to let you know that the bill for the additional costs is paid. The second bill for the monthly premium confuses me because I paid it on the 2nd and your bill dated the 8th tells me to pay it immediately. Can you tell me why this is?”
Fr. Landolt: “What have you done with the bill for the additional costs. Additional costs, [shouted slowly] ADDITIONAL COSTS. [exasperated] Do you understand german?”
mr. mac: “Yes I understand you and have just told you that it is already paid. What about this other bill. Why did you send it to me when I have already paid it?”
Fr. Landolt: [dead sarcastically]“Oh please excuse us very much. I am soooo sorry about that.”
mr. mac: “Right then that’s clear, thanks very much. “[CLICK]

If I could have spoken to her in english, I could have asked to speak to her boss and got the satisfaction of telling them all what I thought of them. I really feel like they take advantage of the language barrier in situations like this. You’d think that for the money we pay, they’d be a little bit more courteous but you’d be wrong. Since you have no choice but to pay them, they treat you like shit. Nice idea, but you insulted the wrong Ausländer (foreigner) love.

I pay these people over CHF 7000 per year and it is actually for nothing. Last year they didn’t have to spend a cent on any of us. Not a fucking brass razoo because of the deductible. It’s a con and what makes it worse is that the government actually enforces the con with its bullshit law. Still, if you pay low taxes, you get fuck all for it. Aussie readers take note, Medicare is the shizznit!

Bottom line, I am moving to another company and paying less per month. Fuck you Fr. Landolt and fuck you ASSURA!

>… I just wanted to get on the bandwagon cos I have a funny search term to tell you about. It seems that someone was hoping that I could help out with a little problem she had. You see, she needed help with getting her man’s motor running, so she tried “something to make my husband horny” as a search. What better way to get your husband going than a visit to my humble page?

That’s right, “something to make my husband horny”. Now I don’t know if I was any help, but she certainly thought I could be because she followed the link from Yahoo! where I am the no. 5 ranked page for solving this little dilemma.

I think that her husband may have been somewhat disappointed by anything she found here. I guess we’ll never know, but if you’re in Clarksville, Georgia and your wife made you horny over the weekend, you owe me one.

—End transmission—

>A recent visitor to this site just made an interesting comment to a previous post. It was a totally friendly (although slightly superior) comment about me and my opinions. I have included it here for ease of reading:

Mr Mac, you are hilarious but SOOOO judgemental & acerbic!!!Didn’t you ever come across *that* famous saying(by some obscure Jewish guy…)”Judge not, that ye be not judged” ???

I ‘m not suggesting not to have opinions.We all do unless we are in a Zen monastery(and I ‘m not, believe me).But it’s good to remember that perception(opinion) doesn’t equal knowledge(fact).

Have a lovely day

Do I really come across as a guy who thinks that his opinion is the right one or the only one? If I do, it’s because it’s true then I really need to rethink my writing. But that is beside the point. Do we all agree that a personal blog does not equal an attempt to state that an opinion is a fact. Nor does it attempt to provide fair or balanced reporting. I think it is patently clear that everything ever written here has been pure, unmeditated drivel. So what’s the fuss.

But I will say to you that to most individuals, perception is fact. All the well-meaninged, see-it-from-his-point-of-view crap under the sun won’t change that 97.23789% of us think that our understanding / perception of something is how it is. If one doesn’t have an “understanding” of something, one doesn’t form a perception. One cannot form an opinion of something one doesn’t understand. If the understanding is in someway faulty, the perception is also flawed, but the self-confidence of your typically well-adjusted person leads them to believe that if they think that they understand something then their opinions are right.

If I can’t say what I think without fear of friendly remonstration or the quoting of some obscure Jewish guy then we’re all going to hell in a handbasket. Save the gospel quotes for the bible study group because it’s all about the vitriol here!

And you have a nice day too.

>Found over on Nickle Annie‘s blog is this amusing diversion regarding one’s sense of humour. It turns out that humour-wise I am on

the Cutting Edge (60% dark, 56% spontaneous, 27% vulgar)

your humor style: CLEAN | SPONTANEOUS | DARK Your humor’s mostly innocent and off-the-cuff, but somehow there’s something slightly menacing about you. Part of your humor is making people a little uncomfortable, even if the things you say aren’t themselves confrontational. You probably have a very dry delivery, or are seriously over-the-top. Your type is the most likely to appreciate a good insult and/or broken bone and/or very very fat person dancing. PEOPLE LIKE YOU: David Letterman – John Belushi

I am a little disturbed that I scored so low on Vulgarity – must work on that!

BTW – the html for this test is SOOO not written to fit inside my template! what a pain in the arse!

>In a recent poll entitled “World’s Most Politically Astute People”, I was ranked number 4,577,368,102. So I am not really entitled to spout off about world events, current affairs and the like.

But I’m gonna do it anyway!

Read this story and tell me that there is any fucking excuse for this shit to be happening in this day and age.

What was Live8 all about? What the fuck did Bandaid20 achieve? About three-fifths of fuck all if you ask me (which you did cos you’re sitting there reading this).

Apparently, “Those behind the Make Poverty History and Live8 events say that drawing attention to one disaster and turning the political campaign into a fundraising effort would have been counterproductive.”.

Yes, much better to leave it to the G8 dudes to make it all happen. You just know that we can trust them to make the world a better place.

I could go on about this for ages and millions of blogs have all said the same thing. It’s boring but hey, there must be some way to fix this problem. Did you know that acccording to this website, the money spent securing the oil rights in Iraq could have fully funded global anti-hunger efforts for 7 years?? That figure alone is worth US$185 billion and climbing.

Whether that statistic is true or not* (and leaving aside the moral issues of the war in Iraq), it shows you that there is a fair bit of loose change rolling around in the pockets of governments in the so-called first world. Is it really still up to you and me to fix this problem? I find it quite offensive that people like Tony Blair make a big deal out of the fact that the government donated such-and-such million quid to cause XYZ and urge all Britons to follow suit. Hang on a second. Where do you think you got the money from in the first place T? Did you wriggle that cute nose of yours Samantha Stevens style?

Frankly, I don’t think poverty is the biggest issue on the minds of the people of Niger. I reckon they’d rather have something to eat and the knowledge that they will be able to feed the kids tomorrow, rather than finding out that the G8 summit magnanimously (is there ever a time that word isn’t used sarcastically?) agreed to cancel $1 of debt per person in Africa this year. Can you spell empty gesture children? (Hint: G – 8).

With that in mind, here is the text of my letter to the one person that can solve everything. It is no less rational than anything our elected leaders have offered, and frankly, it’s more likely to happen.

Dear Jeannie,

Can you come and fix the world for us? We fucked it up pretty bad and nobody seems to be able to put it right. I know that if you fix it for us, there will be some hilarious hi-jinks to contend with. Especially if we invite Dr. Bellows and his wife over for dinner, but it’s nothing we can’t resolve in 21 minutes plus commercials (or 42 if we make it a two-parter).

Yours in blinking adoration,

mr. mac
xxx

(BTW How hot was Jeannie’s evil twin sister with the dark hair?)

*It is a proven fact that 87.463% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

>Hello and welcome to the second installment of my continuing search for the worst dressed bit of eurotrash. If you cast your mind back, I first shocked you with the ghastly sights I saw on a, frankly, terrible day in Swiss fashion history. You can read it here if you’re late to the party. If you get offended by someone making fun of others – look away now. That means you, underdog dancing in rip zips.

It seems that fashion disasters transcend national borders. The Swiss border patrol are ever vigilant in their search for people bringing too much milk back to Switzerland but they haven’t done a thing to stop bad fashion mistakes spreading like an insidious cancer across Europe.

Yesterday, the target of my mission was Austria. Lovely place, friendly people and generally just fabulous. I understand the German spoken there a lot better too. We landed in the middle of the Feldkirch Gauklerfestival which was a lot of fun. For those who don’t know, a Gaukler is a juggler or circus performer which explained all the street performers.

I was dropped in behind enemy lines and went straight to work. Within minutes, I was accosted by this pair of “hair styles”. I concede that you may not have the money to buy nice clothes, but you don’t have to pay for your hair. Although maybe these two should be made to pay for this.

Their faces have been obscured (by the backs of their heads) to protect my anonimity

Later, I stumbled across this travesty.

As if the crime of socks and velcro sandals isn’t bad enough (and there was plenty of it on display here), we see here a man wearing a pair of Birkenstocks and white sport socks. As a way of drawing attention to this, he decided to turn his jeans into an unevenly cut-off pair of cut-offs, which was nice. This guy didn’t have to pay for these shorts or the socks so what’s his excuse.

To finish the mission, I found this fetching litle number, which was teamed with a super looking green t-shirt. I only wish that the shot showing his David Beckham-esque facial hair (circa 1999) was visible to you.

Could he be anymore orange? I also want to comment about the streaks. Is that trendy? Is it attractive? I am the first to admit that I am not exactly on the cutting edge of fashion technology but c’mon. Throw me a frickin’ bone here.

That finishes my Austrian mission. Not sure where’s next. Let’s wait and see what Fashion HQ comes up with.

—End transmission—