• Rice Krispie Treats

    Okay, this is gonna sound stupid, but can anybody e-mail me a recipe for Rice Krispie Treats? I’ve got a hankering for them but I’m not sure how to make them. I went to the store for a box of the cereal, but to my surprise I discovered that here it’s called “Rice Bubbles”. The only recipe on the box was for “Chocolate Crinkles”, which is apparently the preferred puffed rice treat of choice here in Australia. (Snook says they’re nasty. They consist of cereal, cocoa, coconut, sugar, and fat. Actually, though, that doesn’t sound that far off Rice Krispie Treats. He says, “They’re the kind of thing little kids eat lots of and end up all sticky and covered in chocolate and then they chuck because they ate eleven of them.”) Anyway, I don’t want some random recipe off the Internet; I want the official Kellogg’s Rice Krispie Treat formula. If anybody’s got a box at home, I’d be ever so grateful if you’d pass it along.


  • My mailman hates you guys

    Wow, the birthday love keeps flowing. Getting presents through the mail is the best, because they’re so unexpected. Thanks to my mom and Joe for the quilting supplies, and to my dad and Cindy for the “George W. Bush Family Paper Doll” book. (Seriously, that one made me shoot Coke out my nose with laughter.) Big thanks also to Mama Snook for the clock, Max for the Susan Cooper books, Kristen for the A Room With a View DVD, and Brigita for the Bruce Campbell Gift Package Extraordinaire. You guys rock.


  • CIPA

    I was reading an article about the congressional trial challenging the Children’s Internet Protection Act when I came across the following statement:

    CIPA, signed into law in 2000 by President Bill Clinton, was the third attempt by Congress to restrict access to the Internet and its estimated 11 million World Wide Web sites, about 1 percent of which experts say contain some sort of sexually explicit material.

    One percent??? Does that sound low to anyone else? I mean, sure, if you’re talking hard-core porn images, but what about erotic fanfiction, smutty personal journals, and chatrooms? Don’t get me wrong; I’m not arguing in support of the CIPA. I think it’s idiotic. I’m just pointing out that whoever wrote this article hasn’t done any research since 1997. Google‘s indexed over two billion pages already! Very sloppy reporting…

    Edited 27/03/2025: Original news story link is dead and not archived.


  • Dreamlog

    This waas the ultimate nerd dream. I dreamed that somehow Rodd and I were at the LucasFilm offices during pre-production for Star Wars. We got to see all the concepts as they were being developed. I remember a guy coming in and telling us that they’d just finalized the design for Darth Vader. Some of the other characters looked totally wrong though (C-3PO had really long legs, for instance). I had the brilliant idea that we could just tell these guys what the movie was supposed to look like, and that would save them lots of time. But upon discussing this idea with Rodd, we realized that this would create a time travel paradox. Since we were in the past but with knowledge of the future, if we told George Lucas what C-3PO was supposed to look like, then that’s why he looked like what we thought he did in the first place. And that meant that the version we had seen in the future wasn’t necessarily the one that they would’ve created on their own had we not interfered. Get it? So then we had the brilliant idea that for each character, we’d make up a list of options, one of which would be the version we knew from the future, and the rest all wrong. And that would still save them time, but it would also allow them to retain a decision in the matter. Then I woke up. Like I said, it was a really nerdy dream.


  • Well, that project I mentioned I was working on is almost finished. It’s a revamp of the alumnae website for my college dorm. I had sudden inspiration on Friday and scrapped everything I had done previously. What you see there took me four days, start to finish. I’m pretty proud.


  • Oscar Contest

    Jim Broadbent? Jim Broadbent??? There go my chances in both of my Oscar pools. I mean, hey, I like the guy and all (he was great in Bullets Over Broadway), but who in the hell predicted that?


  • Fifteen bloody kilometers

    We did it. Just over two hours. Man, I’m tired. Thanks to everybody for their support, and especially to anon, brigita, Frances, and our parents for the donations. I took pictures along the way, but I didn’t want to lug my digital camera so we just used an instant one. I’ll post the pics as soon as I can get them developed.


  • Lyrics game

    Tara D is finally back from her holiday, which sounds like it was L.A.-tastic. To celebrate she’s doing yet another lyric game. This time, you have to send her a list of all the songs you can think of with “L.A.” or Los Angeles landmarks in them. Go on, you know you’ll kick my ass.


  • HEART ATTACK

    Oh. My. God. Someone just knocked on our door, which was rather a surprise. (We have a buzzer, so we know when to expect people.) I peeked through the eyehole to see two official looking guys. I opened the door and they both thrust badges at me. My brain exploded:

    “OH MY GOD. IT’S THE IMMIGRATION OFFICIALS. THEY’RE GOING TO DEPORT ME!”

    Instead it was two cops investigating an assault that occurred down the road from us a few weeks ago. I told him we hadn’t heard anything. Then I shut the door and slumped to the ground in a dead faint. *whew*


  • My name is Kris, and I love reality television.

    Last night Snookums and I caught the first episode of Australia’s newest reality TV series: The Club. It’s all about an Aussie Rules Football* team that’s being put together specifically for the show. That’s right, it’s a sports team that will actually compete (albeit in Division 2) and the viewers get to make all the important decisions, like who plays, who coaches, and what the team song will be. Seriously. Last night we got to pick the team name (the “Hammerheads”) and watch the four coach candidates narrow down 1500 hopefuls to a mere 50 possible players. (The final team will probably have only fifteen or so.) And get this – three of them are female! One was a sexy black chick, one was a tearful mother-of-three, and the last was a young, tough, athletic girl. Her name was Debbie Lee, and she’s amazing. We watched her drop kick the ball through the uprights from forty yards out while running full-speed. She was better than most of the guys on the field. The show then explained that the AFL league hasn’t decided yet whether women will be allowed to play in the games. They feel it could create a dangerous precedent. Personally, I think it would be the greatest thing for them to do. If Debbie Lee plays, I’ll watch every game I can. Heck, I’ll buy a T-shirt. They’ve got a potential marketing bonanza on their hands, here. And what a fantastic idea for a show! Everybody likes to bitch about how their favorite team is run, and now you can have an actual say in things. It’s got me watching, and I don’t even understand the damn sport.

    * Aussie Rules Football, in case you don’t know, is this really insane sport they play down here. It’s kinda like rugby crossed with ultimate frisbee crossed with soccer. You’re not allowed to pass the ball forwards; you have to kick it or bump it off your fist (like a serve in volleyball). And if you’re running with it, you have to tap it on the ground every 10 yards. To score you have to get it through the uprights. The players don’t wear padding, and they smash the hell out of each other. It’s huge in South Australia and Victoria. I don’t really understand it.



ABOUT

My name is Kris. I’ve been blogging since the 90’s. I live in Sydney, Australia, and I spent most of my career in the tech industry.

No AI used in writing this blog, ever. 100% human-generated.


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